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College of Humanities People

Julia Watson, Associate Dean & Professor

Arts & Humanities: http://humanities.osu.edu/
Department of Comparative Studies: http://comparativestudies.osu.edu/



Education:
Ph.D in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

General Background:
Teaching and Research specialist in life narrative and theory of autobiography. Other research and teaching interests include feminist theory and women's writing, twentieth-century postcolonial and multicultural authobiography, visual autobiography and film. Co-written Reading Autobiography: A Guide to Interpreting Life Narrative with Sidonie Smith, and co-edited five collections. Recent essays on theorizing autobiography; on German Jewish Holocaust artist-author Charlotte Salomon; on western American women's life writing. Current projects: book on autoethnographic writing and reading practices, collaborative book on autobiographical hoaxes, an essay on comix.

Selected Publications

Books:

Before They Could Vote: American Women's Autobiographical Writing, 1819-1919. Co-edited with Sidonie Smith. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Co-edited with Sidonie Smith. University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Co-written with Sidonie Smith. University of Minnesota Press, 2001, second printing 2005.

Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Co-edited with Sidonie Smith. University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Second printing, 2001.

Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography. Co-edited with Sidonie Smith. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Second printing, 2000.

De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. Co-edited with Sidonie Smith. University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Articles

"The Spaces of Autobiographical Narrative." In Räume des Selbst – Transkulturelle Perspektiven der Selbstzeugnisforschung / Spacing the Self – Transcultural Perspectives in Research on Self Narratives. Ed. Gabrielle Jancke et al. Sept. 2007.

“Say It Isn’t So: Autobiographical Hoaxes and the Ethics of Life Narrative.” With Sidonie Smith. In Life Writing: Autobiography, Biography, and Travel Writing in Contemporary Literature. Conference Proceedings, ed. Koray Melikoglu. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2007, 15-34.

“Introduction: Living in Public.” Co-written with Sidonie Smith. In Before They Could Vote: American Women's Autobiographical Writing, 1819-1919. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2006, pp 3-22.

“‘When Women Pursue Justice’: Connecting for Change.” When Women Pursue Justice (community mural exhibition catalog funded by NY Council for the Humanities). NY: Artmakers Inc., 2006 (7-15).

“The Trouble with Autobiography : Cautionary Notes for Narrative Theorists.” With Sidonie Smith. In A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz. New York and London: Blackwell, 2005.

“Bringing Mary MacLane Back Home: Western Autobiographical Writing and the Anxiety of Place.” In Western Subjects: Autobiography in the North American West. Ed. Kathleen Boardman and Gioia Woods. University of Utah Press, 2004, 216-46.

“Ben Franklin, Protector of Americans Abroad.” Biography 26.3 (Summer 2003), 438-39.

“Charlotte Salomon’s Memory Work in the “Postscript” to Life or Theatre?” (introduction and translation). Signs: Special issue on gender and memory, 28:1 (autumn 2002). 409-29.

"Autobiography as Cultural Performance: Charlotte Salomon's Life or Theater?." In Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Ed Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. University of Michigan Press, 2002.342-82.

"Mapping Women's Self-Representation at Visual/Narrative Interfaces." With Sidonie Smith. Introduction to Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. University of Michigan Press, 2002, 1-46.

"The Rumpled Bed of Autobiography: Extravagant Lives, Extravagant Questions." With Sidonie Smith. Biography, 24:1 (Winter 2001), 1-14.

“Writing in Blood: Autobiography and Technologies of the Real in Janet Campbell Hale’s Bloodlines.” In Haunting Violations: Feminist Criticism and the Crisis of the "Real". Ed. Wendy Hesford and Wendy Kozol. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000, 111-136.

In progress: “‘As Gay and as Indian as They Chose’: Collaboration as Counter-Ethnography in In the Land of the Grasshopper Song.” In Something Other Than Autobiography, ed. Catherine Komisaruk and Kathleen McHugh. Under review. Second edition: Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Co-written with Sidonie Smith. University of Minnesota Press. Book--Documented Lives: The Evidence of Autobiography Collaborative Book--Facing the Hoax: Autobiogarphical Hoaxes and the Global Politics of Fair Trade Essay on "Graphic Disclosures: Translating Sexualities in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home."

Autobiography studies
Women's narratives
Literature