About Framing Lives

The Humanities Research Centre and National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University, in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, present Framing Lives, the 8th Biennial Conference of the International Auto/Biography Association. The field of auto/biography and life narrative studies is dynamic and interdisciplinary. Founded in 1999, the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) is the leading international forum for scholars, critics and practitioners. The Framing Lives conference will feature distinguished international speakers and events at the National Portrait Gallery and other national collecting institutions.

Framing Lives draws attention to the extraordinary turn to the visual in contemporary life narrative: to graphics and animations, photographs and portraits, installations and performances, avatars and characters, that come alive on screens, stages, pages, and canvas, through digital and analogue technologies. At the same time, framing suggests the ways that lives are lived, recorded and viewed through multiple frames including those of language, politics, place, gender, history and culture. It draws attention to the multiple ‘I’s of auto/biographical representations now, and the various fields of vision, lines of sight, and points of focus for critics, artists, writers, historians and curators in the life worlds of auto/biography. Conference themes include depiction and display, ethics and rights, living archives, place and displacement, media and celebrity, digital identity and social media, and creative life narrative.

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Special Event

IABA 2012 will begin with a special event featuring Antjie Krog and Paul Patton at the National Portrait Gallery on the evening of Tuesday July 17. Conference sessions will begin at 9am on Wednesday July 18, however we alert you that in winter foggy conditions can sometimes delay morning flights into Canberra and you need to take this into account when making bookings. We anticipate the conference will conclude on Friday July 20 in time to allow flights out from 4pm.

Note for Visitors

For those travelling from the northern hemisphere we remind you that it will be midwinter in Canberra, and July daytime temperatures average 5-11deg C. Please check time zone changes from northern destinations, allowing for time travelled in flight plus changes of time zone. You can check these changes at the global time calculator here.

Convenors

Paul Arthur (Deputy Director, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University)
Rosanne Kennedy (Associate Professor and Head of Discipline, Gender Sexuality & Culture, Australian National University)
Gillian Whitlock (ARC Professorial Fellow, School of English, Media Studies & Art History, University of Queensland)

Conference Enquiries

Contact: Leena Messina, Programs Manager, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University
Email: leena.messina@anu.edu.au
Phone: (+612) 6125 4357

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