Text and Image in Women's Life Writing

Valérie Baisnée-Keay is Associate Professor in English at the University of Paris Saclay, Paris, France.Nicoleta Alexoae-Zagni is Associate Professor at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, France.Corinne Bigot is Associate Professor in Postcolonial Literature at Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès, France.Stephanie Genty is Associate Professor at the Université d’Évry-Val d’Essonne - Paris-Saclay, France.Claire Bazin is Professor of 19th-Century English and Commonwealth Literature at Paris Nanterre University, France.

“Through lifewriting texts in various media and modalities, the contributors to Text and Image in Women’s Life Writing: Picturing the Female Self engage with text, images, and gender, to reclaim “images of women and by women.” The ways that authors and artists deploy images and text may complement, resist, or contradict the other, which enriches the life narrative analysis at the center of the work.” (Amy Carlson, Biography, Vol. 46 (2), 2023)“Text and Image in Women's Life Writing is an impressive collection that admirably achieves its purpose ‘to contribute to the ongoing conversation on text, image, and gender’ … . It will be of special interest to H-Biography network members and others … . For those of us involved in the practice of women’s biography, this volume grapples with and provides insights about four highly pertinent areas, namely, identity, memory, referentiality and embodiment.” (Josephine May, H-Net Reviews, h-net.org, April, 2022)

• Introduction - Valérie Baisnée-Keay.- Part One: Image-ing Identity.- 1 Thinking through the Book and Reimagining the Page: Julie Chen’s Artists’ Books and Faith Ringgold’s Story Quilts - Hertha D. Wong.- 2 ‘[Un]systematic, even with the image’: Text-image Blurring, Self-Inquiry and Ontological Anxiety in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s works - Marie-Agnès Gay.- 3 A Visual-Verbal-Virtual Redefinition of Womanhood by Janet Mock - Aurelia Mouzet.- 4 Authoritatively Her/Self: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Life Writing - Edyta Frelik.- Part Two: Reframing Memories.- 5 Fun Homes and Queer Houses of Memory in Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Memoirs - Heloise Thomas.- 6 Framing herself then and now: Shirley Geok-lin Lim and the Evolving Practice of Photo Albums - Nicoleta Alexoae-Zagni.- 7 Nostalgic Albums or Alternative Lieux de mémoire? The interplay between stories, photographs, and illustrated recipes in ethnic culinary memoirs by women - Corinne Bigot.- Part Three: Elusive Textual/Visual Referentiality.- 8 Zelda Fitzgerald’s Self-Portraiture: A Strenuous Performance from Ink to Gouache - Elisabeth Bouzonviller.- 9 Isabella Bird-Bishop’s 1897 journey up the Yangtze Valley and Beyond: Beyond the Writing/ Photographing Divide - Floriane Reviron-Piégay.- 10 A Woman’s Life of War Pictures: Elizabeth Butler (1846-1933) - Nathalie Saudo-Welby.- 11 Whistler’s (Mother’s) Daughter: Image-Text Relations in Marilyn French’s Fictionalized (Auto)biography - Stephanie Genty.- Part Four: Visual/Textual Embodiment.- 12 It Is Difficult to Find the Words”: The Image-Text Interface in Lynn Kohlman’s Cancer Auto/biography - Marta Fernández-Morales.- 13 Creating Together an ‘Unexpected Home’: Navigating the Matrixial Borderspace through Text and Image in Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1973–79) - Justyna Wierzchowska.