Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Description

This collection of essays gathers innovative and compelling research on intermedial forms of life writing by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars. Among their subjects of scrutiny are biographies, memoirs, graphic novels, performances, paratheatricals, musicals, silent films, movies, documentary films, and social media. The volume covers a time frame ranging from the nineteenth century to the immediate present. In addition to a shared focus on theories of intermediality and life writing, the authors apply to their subjects both firmly established and cutting-edge theoretical approaches from Cultural Narratology, Cultural History, Biographical Studies, Social Media Studies, Performance Studies, and Visual Culture Studies. The collection also features interviews with practitioners in biography who have produced monographs, films, and novels. The scholarly essays and the interviews with practitioners cover an extensive range of media that engage in intermedial life writing The contributing scholars, who are based in North America and Europe, represent multiple disciplines Table of Contents Acknowledgments Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies: A Brief Introduction Making an Entrance, Illustrating a Life: Remediating Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America Illustrations “More Numerous Than We Could Have Expected”: Biography as “Mixed Media” in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885–1889) Performing Lives in Nineteenth-Century US-American Culture: From Paratheatricals to Early Cinema Lenny: (Auto‐)biography, Black-and-White, and Juxtapositional Montage in Bob Fosse’s Hollywood Renaissance Biopic The Remediation of Little Edie: From It-Girl to Loony Cat Lady to Cultural Icon Graphic Musical Biography: An Intermedial Case of Musico-Comical Life Writing Ekphrastic Encounters and Word– Photography Configurations in Contemporary Transcultural American Life Writing “A Figment of Someone Elseʼs Imagination”: Intermedial Games in Paul Austerʼs Report from the Interior Auto-Assembling the Self on Social Networking Sites: Intermediality and Transnational Kinship in Online Academic Life Writing Intermedial On/Offstage Auto/Biography: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Hip Hop, and Historiography Emily Dickinson, Intermediality, and Life Writing: An Interview with Susan Snively The Respectful Biographer’s Empathetic Imagination: An Interview about Intermediality and Life Writing with Brenda Wineapple Note on the Contributors Index