Editor’s Note

Annual Bibliography of Works About Life Writing, 2021

This year’s installment of Biography’s annotated bibliography bears unmistakable signs of the global pandemic and the accelerating shift in academic publishing toward online publication. One possible sign of COVID disruption is the number of lifewriting dissertations included—twenty-seven, down significantly from the 108 successfully defended in 2020. While this decline could result in part from the tighter focus of our search, the last half of 2020 and the first half of 2021 were undeniably not good times for concentrated writing. Monographs underwent a similar decline—down to thirty-four, from fifty-seven in 2020.

Forty special issues and edited collections appeared in 2021—exactly the same as the previous two years—but the distribution is significant. Twenty-nine of these entries were special issues, and four of the eleven edited collections were book versions of previously published Routledge journal special issues in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and Life Writing. For the most part, then, journals responded to the COVID storm simply by continuing to appear. The number of articles appearing in these volumes dropped somewhat—from 450 in 2020 to 400 in 2021—but these theme-specific publications are still responsible for over twice as many articles as 163 single essays appearing in the regular or open issues of journal—down as well, from 200. In sum, the number of entries for this year’s annotated bibliography dropped from 800 to 625, with decreases in dissertations and monographs accounting for well over half of the difference.

A relatively small number of publishers are responsible for a very large number of entries. Chief this year, and in many previous years, is Routledge, whose book and journal divisions are responsible for six monographs; seven special issues and five edited collections, accounting for well over 100 essays; and twenty separate articles. Through their special issues, clusters, and open issues, the established life-writing journals have a predictably large impact on the field. Life Writing alone has been responsible for over sixty of the articles appearing in 2021, with a/b: Auto/Biography Studies fairly close behind at forty-nine. The European Journal of Life Writing accounts for forty, with Shanghai’s Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies issuing twenty-nine, and the Russian-focused publication AvtobiografiЯ adding twenty more. Many of the over twenty essays appearing in Genealogy were in special issues and clusters bringing together disparate fields. And as for ourselves, forty-four essays, international reviews, and tributes appeared in the various gatherings and regular issues of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.

Finally, while not exclusively devoted to the field, a few other journals are important venues for lifewriting scholarship. The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics published seventeen articles related to life writing in 2021, with Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies contributing twelve, and Disability Studies, M/C Journal, and Oral History Review eight, seven, and six respectively.

Another striking development has been the appearance of open access periodicals and articles. Although many journals still follow a print template, the reality is that the vast majority of readers examine or download articles through various online platforms—Project Muse, Proquest, Taylor & Francis—accessible through institutional subscriptions. Some journals—most notably the European Journal of Life Writing, but also Disability Studies Quarterly, Genealogy, On_Culture, and M/C Journal—are exclusively online and open access. In those entries where such a journal is not paginated, we are providing DOI designations. We do not, however, provide them for journals with pagination, or for journals exclusively online, but behind paywalls. At least ninety of the entries in this year’s bibliography are freely accessible—a substantial, and ever-growing portion. We should also note that because many educational and granting institutions are requiring that publically funded research must be freely accessible, some articles in journals on paywall platforms are also open access. The DOI has been supplied for some of these instances.

Regarding the content of this year’s bibliography, a few notable trends. The literary, formal, and structural dimensions of lifewriting texts are receiving greater substantial attention. Partially due to the rapid increase of nonfiction...