Literal Selves/Literary Selves

LT308: Autofiction is concluding the semester with an all-day symposium. „Autofiction“ is one of the most discussed and debated forms of contemporary literature. It mixes autobiographical and fictional events, and in doing so, displaces traditional autobiography and competes with the novel. This symposium brings together an international array of scholars of autofiction and BCB faculty and students. The symposium will consist of three panel sessions and a keynote by Hywel Dix (Bournemouth University, UK).

The keynote, „Autofiction and Cultural Memory,“ will be delivered by Hywel Dix, Professor of English, Bournemouth University, UK. He has published extensively on the relationship between literature, culture and political change in contemporary Britain, most notably in Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Britain (2010), After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain (Second Edition, 2013) and Multicultural Narratives: Traces and Perspectives, co-edited with Mustafa Kirca (2018). His wider research interests include modern and contemporary literature, critical cultural theory, authorial careers and autofiction. His monograph about literary careers entitled The Late-Career Novelist was published in 2017 and an edited collection of essays on Autofiction in English was published in 2018. He has recently completed a study entitled Autofiction and Cultural Memory.

Speakers will include Michal Mrugalski (Tübigen), Laura Scuriatti (BCB), Catherine Toal (BCB), James Harker (BCB), Hywel Dix (Bournemouth University), Patricia Lopez-Gay (Bard, NY), Larissa Muraveva (BCB), and BCB student participants.

Schedule:
Coffee (8:30-9:15)

Welcome (9:15-9:30)
Greeting and Opening Remarks, Larissa Muraveva

Panel 1 (9:30-11:00): Origins and Influences
Killer Autofiction: Terrorists as Belletrists and Vice Versa in the Romanov Empire – Michał Mrugalski, Universität Tübingen
Life-Writing between History, Fiction and Science: André Maurois‘ Aspects of Biography (1928) – Laura Scuriatti, Bard College Berlin
Fragments and Remnants: Renata Adler’s Speedboat and its Structural Legacy on Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation – Mica Toscano, BA student, Bard College Berlin

Panel 2 (11:15-12:45): Photography, Film, and Autofiction
The Impossibility of the “I”: Cinema and Autofiction – Isabel Cama, BA student, Bard (NY)
Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun and the Phenomenology of Trauma – Helena Gąsiejewska, BA student University College Amsterdam
“Death to the (Female) Author?” From Photography to Life Writing: Realism and the Political Turn of Autofiction – Patricia Lopez-Gay, Bard College, NY
Photography and Affect in the Autobiographical Novels of Annie Ernaux and Maria Stepanova – Larissa Muraveva, Bard College Berlin 

Lunch (12:45-2:30)
Conference Room, Platanenstraße 24

Keynote (2:30-3:30)
Autofiction and Cultural Memory – Hywel Dix, Bournemouth University, UK

Panel 3 (3:45-5:15): Intermedial Forms
The Pleasure of Writing: Autofiction as a Meta-Medium – Sophie Foley, BA student, Bard (NY)
Rogue Biographers: Autofiction as Destroyer of Film in the Movies of Justine Triet – Catherine Toal, Bard College Berlin
Unseen Art in Autofiction – James Harker, Bard College Berlin

Closing Remarks (5:15-5:30)

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For more information, e-mail j.harker@berlin.bard.edu.