ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2013, the editors of ajb: AutojBiography Studies convened a conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, titled “AutojBiography across the Americas: Reading beyond Geographic and Cultural Divides.” As the new editors of ajb, we wanted to define what autojbiography studies in the twenty-first century meant to us by placing an emphasis on international dialogues, collaborative research, interdisciplinary practices, multimodal narratives, and the exploration of diverse methodologies. This conference was our way of constructing a space in which to begin exploring these ideas with our colleagues. To that end, this symposium brought together thirty scholars of life narrative from North America, the Caribbean, and South America for four days of presentations and extended discussions. Our objectives were to develop a community of collaborative researchers in the western hemisphere and to foster discourse on moving beyond limiting geographic, cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries to explore the connections present in our research on autojbiographical narratives of the Americas.
