Vol. 42 No. 2 | September 2016

Call for Papers

Life Writing as Empathy

Guest editor: Rocío G. Davis

University of Navarra

The last three decades have witnessed the “affective turn” (Clough and Halley 2007) in academic scholarship that traverses the humanities and the sciences. In the wake of Silvan Tomkins and Brian Massumi, cultural theorists (Eve Sedgwick, Adam Frank, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Lawrence Grossberg, Sianne Ngai, Ann Cvetkovich, Elspeth Probyn) have explored the complex grammar of emotions as a key site of political mobilization and critical concern. The scholarly interest in emotions, feelings, and affect has increasingly been examined in connection to narrative forms. Suzanne Keen explores the way the narrative turn and the affective turn intersect (2011) while Patrick Colm Hogan discusses how “story structures are fundamentally shaped and oriented by our emotion systems” (2011). At the same time empathy has been at a center of numerous discussions ranging from its relevance to fiction (Keen 2006 & 2007), social justice and contemporary geopolitics (Pedwell 2012, 2014) or civic society (Rifkin 2009).

We are inviting proposals for an issue on the articulation or creation of empathy in life writing, in the context of theories of emotions and emotional cultures. We envision the issue as an interdisciplinary conversation based on a variety of life writing texts, including memoir, diaries, letters, film and documentaries, and online media.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

•      the creation of empathy within specific life writing genres,

•       reader reception and empathy, the aesthetics of empathy,

•      teaching empathy through life writing,

•      visualizing empathetic processes, memoir and theory of mind,

•      empathy and social identities (ethnicity, disability, gender, age, and class),

•      memory and empathy,

•      the ethics of empathy,

•      the rhetorics of empathy, representations of emotions attendant to empathy, and actional and aesthetic empathy, among others.

Please send inquiries and abstracts of 300-500 words to concentric.editor@deps.ntnu.edu.tw on or before October 1, 2015. Final essays of 6,000-8,000 words, 5-8 keywords, and a brief bio will be due on December 15, 2015.

Please also attach a cover letter stating that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts should follow the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes, which should be single-spaced, manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout and typeset in 12-point Times New Roman. For further instructions on documentation, consult our style guide http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/submissions.php

For submissions or general inquiries, please contact us at:concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw

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Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, currently indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, is a peer-reviewed journal published two times per year by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.Concentric is devoted to offering innovative perspectives on literary and cultural issues and advancing the transcultural exchange of ideas. While committed to bringing Asian-based scholarship to the world academic community, Concentric welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds. Each issue ofConcentric publishes groups of essays on a special topic as well as papers on more general issues. The focus can be on any historical period and any region. 

http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/