In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Annual Bibliography of Works About Life Writing, 2007–2008
  • Phyllis E. Wachter (bio)

Social negotiation and the ideal of unanimity—the ideal of a more perfect justice and union not actually ever achieved—exist with and even constitute the perfectionism of the individual self or the particular nation in its public articulation, the individual self and the particular nation as they assume and negotiate their identities.

—John Michael

If you lived on the earth and never made a difference, shame on you!

—Kim (a student in Susan A. Jolley’s class) recalls her grandfather’s words

I’m finally on my way to becoming everything I’ve always wanted to be, especially myself!

—from Frank Warren’s A Lifetime of Secrets

Books

Agosín, Marjorie. Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile. 2d ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.

New edition of Agosín’s account of the use of patchwork tapestries to record, testify, memorialize, and resist events in Pinochet’s Chile.

Association pour l’autobiographie et le patrimoine autobiographique. Garde, mémoire 8 (2008).

Bisannuel catalogue raisonné des texts autobiographiques inédits (récits, journaux et correspondances) déposés à l’Association pour l’autobiographie; 259 échos.

Backus, Irena. Life Writing in Reformation Europe: Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008.

Highlights the reasons for the great increase in the number and diversity of Lives of Reformers written by their sixteenth and seventeenth century contemporaries. [End Page 595]

Barczewski, Stephanie. Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Antarctic Heroism. New York: Continuum, 2007.

Explores the evolution of the reputations of Scott and Shackleton in Britain and the US over the twentieth century.

Bartolomeo Platina. Lives of the Popes. Vol 1: Antiquity. Ed. and trans. Anthony F. D’Elia. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008.

New Latin text, and first complete English translation, of Bartolomeo’s compendium of the Roman popes from St. Peter to his own time (1421–1481); Vol. 1 covers through AD 461.

Barvosa, Edwina. Wealth of Selves: Multiple Identities, Mestiza Consciousness, and the Subject of Politics. College Station: Texas A & M UP, 2008.

Offers theoretical framework for understanding multiple identities in terms of intersectionality, identity contradictions, and practices of self-integration.

Bitterman, Rusty, and Margaret McCallum. Lady Landlords of Prince Edward Island: Imperial Dreams and the Defence of Property. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2008.

Prosopography of eighteenth century women absentee owners of large estates on Prince Edward Island charts the dynamics of power and privilege in trans-Atlantic British society.

Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. Knowing Dickens. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2007.

Argues that Dickens based many of his characters’ psychological traits on his own.

Bond, Alma Halpert. Margaret Mahler: A Biography of the Psychoanalyst. Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland, 2008.

Psychobiography focuses on Mahler’s development of separation-individuation theory and her work with the Master’s Children’s Clinic.

Bowker, Geoffrey C. Memory Practices in the Sciences. Cambridge: MIT P, 2008.

Chronicles the convergences of information technologies with studies of the nature and production of knowledge and the continual reconfiguration of the past.

Boyle, Claire. Consuming Autobiographies: Reading and Writing the Self in Post-War France. Oxford: Legenda, 2007.

Examines écriture de soi as a site of conflict between writer and reader, as authors assert the unknowableness of their identities in the face of readers who demand privileged knowledge.

Brumble, H. David, III. American Indian Autobiography. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2008.

New introduction to Brumble’s 1988 work, which highlights the editorial assumptions and methods of print autobiography as it encountered oral autobiographical traditions.

Bryan, Jennifer. Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008.

Explores the “mixed life” reasoning (found in 2 Corinthians 4:16) that “though our outward [End Page 596] man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day,” to show how English readers between 1350 and 1550 examined themselves in the mirrors of devotional literature.

Calame, François, Jean-Pierre Castelain, and Pierre Schmit. Le Mémoire orale: Rencontres ethnologiques de Rouen. Mont-Saint-Aignan: PU de Rouen et du Havre, 2008.

Oral histories inform a longitudinal ethnography of the construction of...

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