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International Conference

Controlling Time and Shaping the Self: The Rise of Autobiographical Writing since 1750.

Rotterdam 15-17 June 2006

The aim of the conference is to look at the development of autobio­graphical writing during the last three centuries from new perspectives. Scholars from various fields will focus on new 
research questions like the relation between  diary writing and the changing percep­tion of time and the rising popularity of memoirs with the increasing vogue for nostalgia. Other lectures
will address the growing influence of publis­hing and commer­ciali­zation on the genre. In addition to well-known autobiographers also the broadening stream of lesser known writers will be 
discussed within an international framework. Besides  the link with individualism, this conference will put new explanations to the fore including autobiographical writing as a form of 
control, and as a means to bridge ruptures in personal and public life.

For more information see the program of the project Controlling Time and Shaping the Self, in which these research questions and 
approaches are formulated: www.fhk.eur.nl/onderzoek/egodocumenten. Abstracts of the lectures and more information 
on the participants can be found in the conference reader.


Location: Pel­grimfat­hers Church, Aelbrechtskolk 30, Rotterdam-Delfshaven www.pel­grimvaderskerk.nl). 
Registration by transfer of  40 Euro to ABN-AMRO bank account  44.66.07.460 of the Faculteit der Gees­teswe­tenschappen UvA,  
Amsterdam, with mention of `Controlling time; WBS C.2023.0­011' ( transfers from abroad: IBAN: Code NL17 ABNA 0446 6074 60, BIC: ABNANL2A). 
(Or 15 Euro for one day, with mention of the date). The conference fee includes coffee, tea, lunch and drinks.

Organization: dr. Arianne Baggerman and dr. Rudolf Dekker, Faculty of History and Arts, Eras­mus University Rotterdam, POB 1738 NL 3000 DR Rot­terdam, Nether­lands,
and the Huizinga Institute, Amsterdam. Email: baggerman@fhk.eur.nl or  r.dekker@fhk.eur.nl.


PROGRAMM:  UPDATED 06-03-2006

15 June 2006

9.00 Registration.

9.50 Arianne Baggerman (Erasmus University Rotterdam): Introduction.

10.00 Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge): Historicizing the Self.

10. 45 Coffee, tea.

11.00 Workshops.

(1) Chair: Helen Wilcox (University of Groningen).

Wim Denslagen (University of Utrecht): The Dual Meaning of Authenticity.

Eveline Koolhaas (University of Amsterdam): Behind the Mask of Gentility. Physiognomic Approaches in Eighteenth-Century Portraiture.

Lisa Kuitert (University of Amsterdam): Knowing the Writer, by Portrait: The Influence of Photography on Authors and Authorship in the Nineteenth Century.

(2) Chair: Hans Renders (University of Groningen/Biografie Instituut).

Jeroen Blaak (Erasmus University Rotterdam): Autobiographies of Self Made Men and Women in the Netherlands in the Nineteenth Centu­ry.

Pieter Stokvis (Open Universiteit of the Netherlands): Changing Self-Portraits and Partner Profiles in Matrimonial Advertisements from 1825 until 1925.

Marilyn Himmesoete (University of Paris 7 Denis Diderot): Writing and Measuring Time. Nineteenth-century French Teen­agers Dia­ries.

12.30 Lunch

14.00 Session Time consciousness

Chair: Solange Leibovici (University of Amsterdam).

Ann  Jensen Adams (University of California, Santa Barbara): Time IN and OF the Dutch Seventeenth-Century Por­trait.

Philippe Lejeune (University of Paris-Nord): M.A. Jullien Jr et le contrôle du temps.

16.00 Coffee, tea

16.15 Marina Warner (University of Essex): Stranger Magic. Time Travel and Other Selves.

17.00 Drinks

 

16 June 2006

9.30 Registration.

10.00 Dror Wahrman (Indiana University, Bloomington): The Making of the Modern Self. Iden­tity and Culture in Eighte­enth-Century England (provisional title).

10.45 Coffee, tea.

11.00 Session Controlling Time

(1)   Chair: Maria Grever (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

Celeste Brusati (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): Temporality and Reflection in Dutch Still Life Painting.

Alfred Messerli (University of Zürich): Swiss Popular Almanacs 1700-1900. Construction of Time by Numbers, Text and Pictures.

Molly MacCarthy (Wellesley College): The Diary versus the Pocket-Watch. Understanding Time in Nineteenth-Century America.

(2)   Chair: Hanco Jürgens (Radboud University Nijmegen).

Avriel Bar-Levav (Open University Israel): Time in Nineteenth-Century Hebrew Autobiographies.

Davíð Ólafsson (University of St. Andrews): Diaries in the State of  Scribal Culture. The Rise of Diary Writing in Nineteenth-Century Iceland and its Cultural Context.

Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (University of St. Andrews): Dreams of Things Past. Life Writing in Iceland.

12.30 Lunch

14.00 Session Ruptures

Chair: Michael Mascuch (University of California, Berkely).

Thomas Max Safley (University of Pennsylvania): Time is Money. The Construction and Reconstruction of Time in the Testimonies of Early Modern Bankrupts.

James Amelang (Universidad Autonoma, Madrid): Tracing Lives. The Spanish Inquisition and the Act of Autobiography.

Petra Buchholz (Freie Universität Berlin): The Second World War and Autobio­graphy in Japan. Tales of War and the Movement for Ones Own Story.

16.00 Coffee, tea.

16.15 Peter Fritzsche (University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham­paign­): Writing in Difference. Drastic History and the Produc­tion of Autobio­graphy.

 

17 June 2006

9.30 Registration.

10.00 Hulya Adak (Sabanci University Istanbul): Ottoman-Turkish Encounters with Armenian(ized) Self/ves in Twentieth Century Autobiographical Writing.

10.45 Coffee, tea.

11.00 Session Identity and Communication

(1) Chair: Gabi Jancke (Free University Berlin).

Lotte van de Pol (Freie Universität Berlin/University of Utrecht): Diary Writing at Courts at the End of the Eighteenth Century, the Dutch Case.

Donna Loftus (Open University, London): Middle ­Class Men and the Civic. Histories of Self and Place in the Late Nineteenth Century.

Ofer Nur (University of California, Los Angeles): Can there be a Collective Egodocument? Self-writing and the Kibbutz as a Collective Experience

(2) Chair: Gert-Jan Johannes (University of Utrecht).

Roelof van Gelder (National Library, The Hague/NRC-Handelsblad):  Forgotten Mail. Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Letters in the National Archives, London..

Willemijn Ruberg (University of Limerick): Epistolary Education. The Letters of an Irish Father to his Daughter, 1747-1752.

Hugo Röling (University of Amsterdam): The Development of the Self in Memo­ries of Childhood in the Netherlands and Flanders, 1770-1950.

12.30 Lunch

14.00 Session Autobiography and Commerce

 

Chair: Rudolf Dekker (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

Marijke Huisman (Erasmus University Rotterdam): Selling the Self: Publishing and Marketing Autobiograp­hies in the Netherlands, 1850-1918.

Michael Mascuch (University of California, Berkeley): The Commodity Function of Autobiography before 1800.

John Eakin (Indiana University, Bloomington): The Economy of Narrative Identity.

15.30 Coffee, tea, drinks.

 

The conference is part of the NWO-project Con­trol­ling Time and Shaping the Self. Educa­ti­on, Intro­spec­tion and Prac­tices of Writing in the Nether­lands 1750-1914, and the NWO-project Egodocu­men­ts, Introspection and Cultural Change:  The Netherlands, Swit­zerland and the European Context, 1600-1900 (Huizinga Insti­tuut Amsterdam, Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Basel).