Mar and Me: Following the Traces

Abstract

In this paper I will trace the influence that Marlene Kadar's scholarship has had on my own thinking, while making more general comments about personal writing and collaborative research as feminist practices. . Marlene and I, along with Jeanne Perreault and (for the first volume Susanna Egan) co-edited two books and one special issue of a journal together. But it was not until I read her essay for our first book, Tracing the Autobiographical (2005), that I really saw how much Kadar could stretch the idea of life writing even further and find even more lives, vulnerable lives, in the most unexpected places. Kadar adds traces and fragments to our understanding of autobiographical practices. The expansiveness of her thinking cuts a path for others to follow.