Keynotes and Special Panels

Barbara Harlow is the Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor of English Literatures in the Department of English at The University of Texas at Austin with courtesy appointments in/affiliations with Comparative Literature, Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. She has also taught at the American University in Cairo (1977-83 and again in 2006-7 as Visiting Professor and Chair of English and Comparative Literature), University College Galway (1992), University of Minnesota Twin Cities (1994), University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg (1998) and University of Natal in Durban (2002). She is the author of Resistance Literature (1986), Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention (1992), After Lives: Legacies of Revolutionary Writing (1996), and co-editor with Mia Carter of Imperialism and Orientalism: A Documentary Sourcebook (1999) and Archives of Empire: Vol 1: From the East India Company to the Suez Canal and Vol 11, The Scramble for Africa (2003). She is currently working on an intellectual biography of the South African activist, Ruth First. Her teaching and research interests include “imperialism and orientalism” and “literature and human rights/social justice.”

For more on Barbara Harlow and her current work:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/english/faculty/profiles/Harlow/Barbara/

Philippe Lejeune is the leading European critic and theorist of autobiography, and arguably the pre-eminent life writing theorist in the world. His landmark essay “The Autobiographical Pact” has shaped life writing studies for over thirty years, and his many books and essays have repeatedly set the direction for whole areas of autobiography scholarship. To cite only one of many examples, “Cher Écran . . . ” Journal personnel, ordinateur, Internet (2000) was the first book-length study of online diaries, making him the first theorist of the blogosphere. His approach to autobiography is rigorously theoretical, and it makes a bold case for autobiography as a privileged source for the understanding of social and cultural history. Lejeune’s range of subject matter is unusually wide, taking in classical masterworks, popular literature, how-to manuals, the painted self-portrait, and oral as well as written narratives. Lejeune is also an engaging and entertaining writer. According to Michael Riffaterre, “Lejeune’s work on autobiography is the most original, powerful, effective approach to a difficult subject . . . . His style is very personal, lively. It grabs the reader as scholarship rarely does. Lejeune’s erudition and methodology are impeccable. With Genette and Greimas, he is among the most representative practitioners of narratology in France.”

Lejeune has also been a major force for the preservation and study of the diaries and journals of “those who do not write.” He was also the founder in 1992 of the Association pour l’autobiographie et le patrimoine autobiographique (APA), the Association for Autobiography and the autobiographical heritage. This organization is devoted to the preservation and study of diaries and journals in France; it has since expanded to other locations in Europe. Lejeune is the editor of La Faute à Rousseau the official journal of APA, and a source of information about the activities of the various branches of the organization.

For more on Association pour l’autobiographie et le patrimoine autobiographique (APA):

http://sitapa.free.fr/

Alicia Partnoy is a survivor from the secret detention camps where about 30,000 Argentineans “disappeared.” She is the author of The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival, and of the poetry collections Little Low Flying/Volando bajito, and Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana. Partnoy edited You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile, and from 2003 to 2006, she was the co-editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: The journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. A former Vice-Chair of Amnesty International, Partnoy is an associate professor and the Chair of the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Loyola Marymount University. After twenty years of circulation in English, the original manuscript of her tales about being disappeared in Argentina has just been published in her country as La Escuelita-Relatos testimoniales. Partnoy presides over Proyecto VOS-Voices of Survivors, an organization that brings survivors of state-sponsored violence to lecture at U.S. universities. Her work has been published in more than twenty anthologies, and in journals in the U.S.A and abroad.

Alicia Partnoy nació en la Argentina en 1955. Durante los años que pasó en la cárcel como presa política, sus poemas e historias fueron deslizados en secretofuera de la prisión y publicados anónimamente en diarios y revistas de organizaciones de derechos humanos. Desde su llegada a los Estados Unidos ha dado numerosas conferencias por invitación de Amnesty International, organizaciones religiosas, universidades y otras entidades . Ha presentado testimonio sobre violaciones a los derechos humanos en la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, la Organización de los Estados Americanos, Amnesty International, y organizaciones de derechos humanos en la Argentina. Su testimonio aparece en "Nunca Más", El informe final de la Comisión Argentina para la Investigación de Desapariciones. Editó "You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile" (Cleis Press,1988), y es miembro del Consejo Directivo de Amnesty International U.S.A.

A. Partnoy tiene tres hijas: Ruth, a quien menciona en su cuentos y poesías escritos desde la prisión, y Eva Victoria y Anahí Paz, nacidas en los Estados Unidos.Actualmente vive con su esposo Antonio en Washington D.C.

For more on Alicia Partnoy and her current work:

https://www.lmu.edu/Page9228.aspx

Noenoe Silva was born on the island of O‘ahu of Kanaka Maoli descent. She was raised in California but returned to Hawai’i in 1985. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian language, a master's degree in library and information studies, and her doctorate in political science from the University of Hawai’i. In 2001 Silva joined the political science department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where she is an associate professor. She teaches courses in indigenous politics, and Hawaiian language and culture. Her book Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Duke University Press, 2004) won the Baldridge Prize for best book in history. She has also written on the role of hula, literature and representations of women in Native Hawaiian literature.

For more on Noenoe Silva and her current work:

http://www2.soc.hawaii.edu/css/dept/pols/Faculty/silva/nsilva.htm

http://www.sarweb.org/scholars/scholars/individuals/scholar06-07/silva.htm