Call for Papers: Eating Disorders in Life Writing [The Program in Biography and Memoir, CUNY Graduate Center]
New York, NY
Organization: The Program in Biography and Memoir, CUNY Graduate Center
Call for Papers:
Eating Disorders in Life Writing
The Program in Biography and Memoir, CUNY Graduate Center
New York, NY
November 7, 2025
Deadline for Submissions: July 11, 2025
Self-starvation, Patrick Anderson has argued, can be thought of as “an archival project of undoing and becoming”; Maud Ellmann expands, “ingestion and starvation are less opposed than they may seem, for both are destined to undo the self in the very process of confirming its identity.” Eating disorders, then, pose important questions for practitioners and theorists of life writing, that archival genre so concerned with the inscription and unraveling of individual identity. This conference seeks to explore those questions — what problems does the representation of eating disorders raise for life writing? What do the archives of eating disorders uncover? What do eating disorders reveal about writing, about life? What are the ethical obligations of eating disorder memoirists to their often vulnerable readers?
We invite submissions of papers for presentation, addressing the intersection of eating disorders and life writing. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words outlining the paper to be presented, as well as a brief biography. Please email mracklin@gradcenter.cuny.edu and ausmapalmer@gmail.com with any questions. We are interested in academic approaches and the perspectives of writers — if you are unsure whether to submit a proposal or unfamiliar with the conference submission process, please email us.
Possible topics include:
The representation of the banality and boredom brought on by repetitive disordered behaviors/practices
The ethical and artistic representation of disordered eating behaviors
Critiques of stereotypical gendered and cultural representations of eating disorders
Eating disorder memoir/life writing from marginalized/underrepresented groups
The (de)construction of the (auto)biographical self through eating practices and body projects
Formal strategies for representing eating disorders
Problems of plot in eating disorder narratives and critiques of the conventional, cliched recovery arc
Analyses of disordered eating in the work of a particular writer (e.g., Louise Glück, Annie Ernaux)
Ausma Palmer
