The goal of this workshop is to bring together historians and literary scholars working on a wide range of late-medieval and early-modern self-writing forms that challenge the more common, postromantic ideas about autobiography, such as: family books, books of reason, almanacs, artisan autobiographies, but also prefaces and marginalia.

If you wish to attend the workshop, please send an email with your name and affiliation to the following address: nav2110@columbia.edu.

Further Information

You can find further information about the workshop by clicking on the link attached.

Program

November 13, 2020

14:00 – Nicolae Virastau, Columbia University, Freie Universität, “Introduction. Autobiography and Print Culture in Early Modern France.”

14:40 – Rudolf Dekker, University of Amsterdam, “Almanacs in the Netherlands: 16th-19th centuries.”

15:20 – Break

15:50 – June-Ann Greeley, Sacred Heart University, “Epistolary Self: Autobiography and (The Paston) Letters.”

16:30 – Max Cavitch, University of Pennsylvania, “The Jouissance of Self-Indictment: Michael Wigglesworth and his Diary (1653-57).”

17:10 – Break

17:40 – Eva Johanna Holmberg, University of Helsinki, “Visual Self-Description in Seventeenth-Century British Travel Accounts.”

18:20 – Laurie Atkinson, “Autobiography before autobiography in the poetry of William Dunbar.”

November 14, 2020

14:00 – Eva Kormann, “Hauschronik des Elias Holl.”

14:40 – Katarzyna Williams, Australian National University, “Self-formation and self-writing in the texts of Angelus Silesius.”

15:20 – Break

15:50 – Lucio Mare, University of San Francisco, “The Autobiographical Cogito: Was There a Subject Behind the Early Modern Emergence of Life-Writing?”

16:30 – Effie Botonaki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, “Tracing the roots of autobiography in other forms of early modern life-writing.”

17:10 – Break

17:40 – Gabriela Badea, Columbia University, “Autobiographical non-dits in Le Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance.”

18:20 – Alessandro Grandolfo, University of Naples, “The Account Book of Annibale Caccavello.”