Autotheory as a Literary Practice

Call for Papers deadline: 15 April 2026

Conference date: 17 September 2026

INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
Autotheory as a Literary Practice
Ghent University, Belgium | 17 September 2026

Keynote speaker: Lauren Fournier

In recent years, autotheory has increasingly established itself as a burgeoning field of practice and study, as the forthcoming Autotheory and Its Others – edited by Becky McLaughlin, Eric Daffron, Maria Gil Ulldemolins, and Kris Pint – attests to. A capacious term, so far autotheory has been used to designate “literary genres, critical discourse, creative practice, and academic methodology” (Baxter & Auburn). Indeed, roughly coinciding with the 2021 publication of Lauren Fournier’s seminal study on autotheory from a feminist angle, special issues by the journals Arizona Quarterly (ed. Wiegman) and ASAP/Journal (eds. Brostoff and Fournier) have alternatively conceptualised autotheory in relation to poststructuralism and as a decolonial praxis respectively. Between 2022-2023, three other special issues followed, which are devoted to autotheory’s relation to feminism (eds. Sweeney & Gardiner), the concomitant tension between visibility (of the self, the genre, etc.) and discipline (ed. Cernat), and its manifestations as a visual art practice (eds. Baxter & Auburn). 2025, then, saw the publication of the intellectually generous collection Autotheories, edited by Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan, with contributions ranging from psychoanalysis and pedagogy to critical whiteness studies and digital capitalism.

While autotheory’s discursive and textual dimensions are not ignored in these accounts, with experimental citation often being considered a hallmark, what seems to be missing is a comprehensive assessment of autotheory as a distinctively literary practice, alongside its critical-political potential and broader artistic merit. Building on Baxter and Auburn’s typology, we thus seek to home in on that first, literary dimension. In this wider understanding not restricted to explicitly para-academic, non-fictional works (Clare 89), autotheory is related to autofiction and is a kind of experimental writing that starts from embodied experience to stage and question knowledges of all kinds. Moreover, the research field currently seems to be dominated by an Anglophone focus, likely following the term’s uptake in Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (2015), although efforts have been made to position this mode of writing in other linguistic and cultural contexts as well (e.g. Savard-Corbeil, Pint). During this one-day seminar, we therefore seek to open up the category of autotheory by approaching it as a literary practice in its own right with offshoots and alternative entry points in different languages and cultures.

We specifically welcome contributions focusing on one or more of the following aspects:

• Autotheory as a literary genre or mode;
• Autotheory’s borders separating it from related literary practices like autofiction, theory fiction, the theory novel, essay-novel, lyric essay, critical memoir, etc.;
• Historical precursors to autotheory from a literary perspective;
• Questions of voice (performative, collective, etc.) and authorship;
• Discussions regarding autotheory’s relation to fact and fiction;
• Narratological matters, including questions of narration and focalisation;
• Paratextual elements;
• Recurring themes (e.g. sexuality, motherhood, violence) & motifs (e.g. water);
• Intertextual networks of “kinship” (Brostoff) among authors writing works of autotheory.

References

Baxter, Katherine, and Cat Auburn. Introduction. Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice, special issue of Arts, vol. 12, no. 11, 2023, https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010011.

Brostoff, Alex. “An Autotheory of Intertextual Kinship: Ambivalent Bodies in the Work of Maggie Nelson and Paul B. Preciado.” Synthesis, no. 14, 2021, pp. 91-115.

Brostoff, Alex, and Vilashini Cooppan, editors. Autotheories. MIT Press, 2025.

Brostoff, Alex, and Lauren Fournier. “Introduction: Autotheory ASAP! Academia, Decoloniality, and ‘I.’” ASAP/Journal, vol. 6, no. 3, 2021, pp. 489-502.

Cernat, Laura. “Introduction: Autofiction, Autotheory, and Regimes of Visibility.” American Book Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2022, pp. 9-17.

Clare, Ralph. “Becoming Autotheory.” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 1, 2020, pp. 85-107.

Fournier, Lauren. Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. MIT Press, 2021.

McLaughlin, Becky, et al., editors. Autotheory and Its Others. Punctum Books, 2026 [forthcoming].

Pint, Kris. “‘I shudder that I exist’. Hadewijch’s Mystical Writings as a Wayward Precursor of Autotheoretical Life-Writing.” The European Journal of Life Writing, vol. 13, 2024, pp. 54-73.

Savard-Corbeil, Mathilde. “L’autothéorie comme forme d’engagement de la littérature contemporaine : Esthétique et féminisme dans Saint Phalle. Monter en enfance de Gwenaëlle Aubry.” Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine, no. 27, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4000/fixxion.13271.

Sweeney, Megan, and Judith Kegan Gardiner. Preface. Autotheory / Autoethnography, special issue of Feminist Studies, vol. 49, nos. 2-3, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2023.a915905.

Wiegman, Robyn. “Introduction: Autotheory Theory.” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-14.

How to submit proposal

Although the seminar language is English with a view to an international exchange of ideas, we encourage research concerning non-Anglophone contexts.

Proposals (max. 300 words) for 20-minute papers and a biographical note should be sent to [email protected] by 15 April 2026.

Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by mid-May.

Selected contributions will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of a journal.