Sounds of a Lifetime: Exploring Life Writing in Audio Media (29–30 January 2026, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
This conference aims to expand the boundaries of life writing studies by focusing on the often overlooked domain of audio life narratives. As Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson highlight in the preface of Reading Autobiography, “[l]ife narrative studies has become an expansive, transnational, multimedia field” (xi), going far beyond the written word. In the latest edition of this seminal work, they touch upon the concept of mediated voice and the aural qualities of social media messages, indicating the varied manifestations of auto/biographical acts (129).
Building on the exciting new work being done in studies of life writing, auto/biography, literary studies, sound studies, and media studies, this conference seeks to explore the multifaceted realm of sonic life narratives, with a particular emphasis on their literary and artistic features, as well as listeners’ individual and collective experiences. More specifically, it seeks to examine how audio life writing represents, mediates, and (re)constitutes lives; what aesthetic strategies are used and what effects they generate; how audio life narratives are received and remediated; as well as their inherent politics.