Publications

2009
Thinking through the Mothers: Reimagining Women's Biographies
Beizer J. Thinking through the Mothers: Reimagining Women's Biographies. Cornell University Press; 2009.Abstract
If questions of subjectivity and identification are at stake in all biographical writing, they are particularly trenchant for contemporary women biographers of women. Often, their efforts to exhume buried lives in hope of finding spiritual foremothers awaken maternal phantoms that must be embraced or confronted. Do women writing in fact have any greater access to their own mothers' lives than to the lives of other women whose stories have been swept away like dust in the debris of the past? In Thinking through the Mothers, Janet Beizer surveys modern women's biographies and contemplates alternatives to an approach based in lineage and the form of thought that emphasizes the line, the path, hierarchy, unity, resemblance, reflection, and the aesthetic-mimesis-that depends on these ideas. Through close readings of memoirs and fictions about mothers, Beizer explores how biographers of the women who came before rehearse and rewrite relationships to their own mothers biographically as they seek to appropriate the past in a hybrid genre she calls "bio-autography." Thinking through the Mothers features the work of George Sand and Colette and spans such varied figures as Gustave Flaubert, Julian Barnes, Louise Colet, Eunice Lipton, Vladimir Nabokov, Huguette Bouchardeau, and Christa Wolf. Beizer seeks an alternative to women's "salvation biography" or "resurrection biography" that might resist nostalgia, be attentive to silence, and reinvent the means to represent the lives of precursors without appropriating traditional models of genealogy.
2006
Autonymies: François la Fraise et le nom du corps
Beizer J. Autonymies: François la Fraise et le nom du corps. In: L’Ecriture sandienne: pratiques et imaginaires. Colloque de Cerisy, Presses Universitaires de Caen ; 2006.
Encore ‘Adieu’: de la repetition à la mort
Beizer J. Encore ‘Adieu’: de la repetition à la mort. In: L'Année Balzacienne. ; 2006.
2005
Beizer J. Dévoiler la momie: à la recherche de Kuchuk Hanem. In: Planté C Lieux litteraires. ; 2005.
2004
Beizer J. Ecoute le chant du labourage: chant et travail de l’écriture dans ‘Les veillées du chanvreur’ de George Sand Neefs J, Reid M. Littérature. 2004;(June 2004).
Beizer J. History’s Life Story: Nanon as L’Histoire de ma vie. In: McCall-Saint-Saens AE George Sand et l’empire des lettres. New Orleans: Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde ; 2004.
Beizer J. History’s Life Story: Nanon as L’Histoire de ma vie. In: George Sand et l’empire des lettres. Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde ; 2004.
2002
Beizer J. One's Own: Reflections on Owning, Motherhood, and Adoption. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 2002;21 (2).
2001
F/V: Notes sur Le Lys dans la vallée
Beizer J, Roulin JM. F/V: Notes sur Le Lys dans la vallée. In: Frappier-Mazur L L'Erotique balzacienne. SEDES ; 2001.
Beizer J. Au [delà du] Bonheur des dames: Notes from the Underground. Zola: Contemporary Perspectives (special issue of Australian Journal of French Studies). 2001.
2000
Beizer J. Writing Origins: George Sand as The Story of Our Life. In: Lloyd R Women Seeking Expression in France 1789-1914. Monash French Studies ; 2000.
You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover: Teaching Le Père Goriot and Modernism
Beizer J. You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover: Teaching Le Père Goriot and Modernism. In: Ginsburg M Approaches to Teaching Balzac's Old Goriot. MLA ; 2000.
1986
Beizer J. Family Plots: Balzac's Narrative Generations. Yale University Press; 1986.