Between History And Personal Narrative

Histories of the Self interrogates historians’ work with personal narratives. It introduces students and researchers to scholarly approaches to diaries, letters, oral history and memoirs as sources that give access to intimate aspects of the past. Historians are interested as never before in how people thought and felt about their lives. This turn to the personal has focused attention on the capacity of subjective records to illuminate both individual experiences and the wider world within which narrators lived. However, sources such as letters, diaries, memoirs and oral history have been the subject of intense debate over the last forty years, concerning both their value and the uses to which they can be put. This book traces the engagement of historians of the personal with notions of historical reliability, and with the issue of representativeness, and it explores the ways in which they have overcome the scepticism of earlier practitioners. It celebrates their adventures with the meanings of the past buried in personal narratives and applauds their transformation of historical practice. Supported by case studies from across the globe and spanning the fifteenth to twenty-first centuries, Histories of the Self is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the ways personal testimony has been and can be used by historians.

This collection focuses on a variety of fictional and non-fictional East European women's migration narratives, multimodal narratives by migrant artists, and cyber narratives (blogs and personal stories posted on forums). The book negotiates the concept of narrative between conventional literary forms, digital discourses, and the social sciences. It brings together new perspectives on strategies of representation, trauma, dislocation, and gender roles. It also claims a place for Eastern Europe on the map of transnational feminism. (Series: Contributions to Transnational Feminism - Vol. 4) [Subject: Sociology, European Studies, Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Migration Studies]

In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives—autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs—are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike. Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. In turn, Telling Stories demonstrates how the knowledge produced by personal narrative analysis is not simply contained in the stories told; the understanding that takes place between narrator and analyst and between analyst and audience enriches the results immeasurably.

What do writers as diverse as Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson have in common? All are masters of the art of writing creative nonfiction, capable of infusing the most prosaic of topics with wit, poignancy, and style. "Writing Creative Nonfiction" outlines the tried-and-true techniques that such writers use to craft brilliant essays, articles, and book-length works, making the tools of trade accessible to those of us who have always dreamed of making our mark in publishing. You'll learn how to write gripping opening sentences; use dialogue and even overheard conversations to bring characters to life on the page: and conduct and incorporate research to add depth and breadth to your work. With the demand for content in both traditional and emerging medias at an all-time high, you too can become a cultural critic, biographer, or esteemed essayist with the help of this indispensable guide.

Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

This book is an historical narrative of academic appointments, significant personal and collaborative research endeavours, and important editorial and institutional engagements. For forty years Michael Matthews has been a prominent international researcher, author, editor and organiser in the field of ‘History, Philosophy and Science Teaching’. He has systematically brought his own discipline training in science, psychology, philosophy of education, and the history and philosophy of science, to bear upon theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in science education. The book includes accounts of philosophers who greatly influenced his own thinking and who also were personal friends – Wallis Suchting, Abner Shimony, Robert Cohen, Marx Wartofsky, Israel Scheffler, Michael Martin and Mario Bunge. It advocates the importance of clear writing and avoidance of faddism in both philosophy and in education. It concludes with a proposal for informed and enlightened science teacher education.

Reflecting on a 50 year university career, Distinguished Professor Arthur Bochner, former President of the National Communication Association, discloses a lived history, both academic and personal, that has paralleled many of the paradigm shifts in the human sciences inspired by the turn toward narrative. He shows how the human sciences—especially in his own areas of interpersonal, family, and communication theory—have evolved from sciences directed toward prediction and control to interpretive ones focused on the search for meaning through qualitative, narrative, and ethnographic modes of inquiry. He outlines the theoretical contributions of such luminaries as Bateson, Laing, Goffman, Henry, Gergen, and Richardson in this transformation. Using diverse forms of narration, Bochner seamlessly layers theory and story, interweaving his professional and personal life with the social and historical contexts in which they developed.

Heritage is a prized cultural commodity in the marketing of tourism destinations. Particular aspects of heritage are often more actively promoted, with others played down. The representation of heritage in tourism as static and timeless, derived since time immemorial from a distant past, is seductive. In Asia, a major part of the tourism market lies in the sale and consumption of highly orientalized images and versions of culture and history. In India’s marketing discourse, the state of Rajasthan symbolizes the nation in its heritage-laden, traditional and most authentic form. These images draw heavily on the British period in India – the Raj. In one sense, this vision of Rajasthan is ennobling, highlighting moments of cultural pride. In another sense, it demeans, by omitting and obscuring salient features of contemporary life. This fascinating book explores the cultural politics of tourism through interdisciplinary perspectives. Carol E. Henderson and Maxine Weisgrau demonstrate that tourism heritage privileges elite histories that recapitulate colonial relationships, compelling non-elites to collude in these narratives of subordination even as they advance their own alternative visions of history.