Crossing Borders: Transnational Perspectives Life-Writing & Ego-Documents

EHRI-UK

How do diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies capture the lived experiences of migration, exile, multilingualism, & cultural transition?

University of Southampton Highfield Campus

Crossing Borders brings together researchers exploring how life-writing and ego-documents (diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies) capture the lived experiences of migration, exile, multilingualism, and cultural transition. The conference highlights how personal narratives illuminate transnational movement, identity formation, and encounters across borders, languages, and empires.Topics addressed across the programme include:<ul><li>Refugee and exile correspondence</li><li>Multilingual ego-documents</li><li>Transimperial and colonial life‑writing</li><li>Migration, memory, and diasporic self‑representation</li><li>Cross‑border family, intellectual, and cultural networks</li><li>Autobiographical writing shaped by political upheaval, conflict, or displacement</li></ul>With case studies spanning Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, the event showcases the global and thematic range of life‑writing scholarship.This conference welcomes scholars at all career stages, especially postgraduate students and early career researchers working on life-writing, ego-documents, migration studies, memory studies, cultural history, linguistics, and related fields.There will also be a Keynote lecture at 17:30 on the same day by Professor Eva Kovács of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute - please book your tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/navigating-the-labyrinth-of-personal-accounts-in-holocaust-studies-tickets-1984651196153" title="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/navigating-the-labyrinth-of-personal-accounts-in-holocaust-studies-tickets-1984651196153">here</a>.We are grateful to the Modern Humanities Research Association, the German Historical Society, and the Leo Baeck Institute London for funding this event.PROGRAMMEArrival and CoffeeFrom 09:00Welcome 09:15-09:30Session 109:30 – 11:00 Panel 1: Navigating and Narrating TransnationallyChair: Claire Le Foll (University of Southampton)Milosz Cybowski (Independent) "The only free one among the nations" – experiences of Polish travellers and exiles in 19th century BritainDaniel Renshaw (University of Reading) Narratives of Migration and Conversion in ‘Hebrew Christian’ autobiographies before 1914Niamh Hanrahan (University of Manchester) Writing Across Borders: Jewish Refugee Correspondence Between Japan and Europe During the Holocaust Panel 2: Language and Mediation in Transnational WritingChair: Monja Stahlberger (University of Reading)Matilde Piu (University College Cork) Transnational Selfhood: Life-Writing in L2 Italian in Janek Gorczyca’s “Storia di mia vita”.Sarah Newman (University of Bristol) Metalinguistic comments in multilingual Holocaust ego-documentsRenata Schellenberg (Mount Allison University)Life Writing and Exile: The Case of Dubravka Ugrešić Break11:00 – 11:15Session 211:15 – 12:45 Panel 3: Generational Life Writing and Archival MemoryChair: Charlie Knight (School of Advanced Study, University of London)Samuel Ramapuram (Goethe University Frankfurt)Archival Border-Crossings: South Asian Personal Records' Transcontinental Afterlives and Migration NarrativesAlessandro Columbu (University of Westminster)Beyond Syria’s borders: Transcultural Memory and Collaborative Life-Writing in Hadi Abdullah’s Critical ConditionsAmy Grant (University of Reading) Lives Between Borders: Ugandan Asian Ego-Documents Across Generations Panel 4: Identity Formation and Life Writing in the Postwar EraChair: Rachel Pistol (University of Southampton)Joanna Bednarska-Rydzewska (University of Lodz) “Good Blood” Trauma: Autobiographical Life Writing of Lebensborn ChildrenYuri Gomez (Newcastle University)Quijano’s Correspondence: Transnational Intellectual Formation and Self-Representation in Postwar Latin AmericaEsther Gardei (Technische Universität Berlin) Autobiographical Writing and Musical Self-Narration in German-Jewish Exile: Fritz Wolf (1908-2006)Lunch12:45 - 13:30Session 313:30 - 15:00Panel 5: Rescue and Relief in the HolocaustChair: Tony Kushner (University of Southampton)Bill Edmonds (Royal Holloway, University of London)Writing Across Borders: The Correspondence of Margarethe Lachmund and Transnational Aid and Friendships in Wartime GermanyIryna Mykhailova (University of Göttingen)Between Emotions and Reason: Correspondences of German-Jewish Exiles and Their Rescuers (Based on Findings from the Harlow Shapley Archive)Ewa Splawska (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań)Jewish Deportees Writing to Power: Petitionary Ego-Documents from the Zbąszyń Transit Camp (1938-1939) Panel 6: Gendered Dimensions in Transnational NarrativesChair: Anoushka Alexander-Rose (Heidelberg University)Christie Margrave (Cardiff University)Reproductive medical tourism: Crossing borders for fertility treatment in the life writing of French Solo Mothers by ChoiceMarie-Christine Alberts (University of Freiburg)Multilayered Perspectives: Esther Gad’s Letters from Her Stay in England and PortugalAnna Marion Weber (Kings College London) Autobiography after Exile: Gender, Jewishness, and the Politics of Life Writing in Postwar West Germany Break15:00 – 15:15Session 415:15 - 16:45 Panel 7: Life Writing in the Shadow of EmpireChair: Pritipuspa Mishra (University of Southampton)Yasmin Akhter (University of Edinburgh) Life-Writing Between Empires: Emily Ruete and the Transimperial Nineteenth CenturyRehnuma Sazzad (School of Advanced Study, University of London)Exploding the Myth of the Unified Subject: Transnational Perspectives in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian CavalcadeShweta Deshpande (Manipal Academy of Higher Education) Construction of the Self in French Colonial India: Interpreting the Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai as an Ego Narrative

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Crossing Borders: Transnational Perspectives Life-Writing & Ego-Documents

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