Search

The author invites scholars from South Asian nations to contribute their papers with focus on important autobiographies and biographies in all of South Asia. He describes how autobiographies and biographies occupy an important place in Indian writing in English. He then offers a rationale and justification for writing autobiography, citing leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. In addition, the author explores the controversial nature of biographies and autobiographies.

This paper is about 'digital life stories' as a new form of autobiography in the 'information age'. One of its aims is to argue that we have been living in the information age long enough for digital life stories to become a significant new form of narrative that reflects the social realities of everyday life under conditions of global complexity. It is argued that digital life stories constitute a new genre that is characterized by four key dimensions. These dimensions are analysed and placed in the context of lives lived in the information age and auto/biographical writing. Issues related to the identification and analysis of digital life stories are then considered. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of digital life stories for auto/biographical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on developments related to the periodical "Auto/Biography." The periodical has been taken over by Sage Publications from Hodder Arnold. The editor is currently seeking another publisher to take on the journal after 2006. The author has returned all papers submitted to the journal to their authors.

We focus, in this paper, using in-depth auto/biographical research, on a Sure Start project in a marginalized community, seeking to understand its impact and meaning through the stories of families. Programmes like Sure Start represent contested space: they may be seen as an exercise in social control in relation to the marginal other. But diverse objectives, values and people shape such programmes and the resources they offer can be experienced in different ways. We provide three narratives from parents who were initially deeply suspicious – in a community where public interventions tend to be treated with caution – and yet found meaningful support with difficult problems. The narratives also reveal the potential of Sure Start to create transactional space for popular involvement in planning and running public services. We interviewed diverse professionals about these processes and suggest that an auto/biological imagination lies at the heart of effective professional practice as well as research. We are reminded, in the process, of a shared and fundamental human need to be loved and cared for, particularly at times of distress. There is much to learn from such a project, but progress remains fragile and the lessons, for public policy, are easily lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that in many recent life narratives a new openness about the part played by colour undermines what have historically been the fixed essentialisms of race. In particular, memoirs that acknowledge difference and division amongst people 'of colour' (such as the fierce criticism by Frantz Fanon of Mayotte Capécia's autobiography) highlight the complexities of racialized categories, and problematize the nexus between 'race' and 'ethnicity'. Analysis of the genre of 'ethnic' autobiography has until recently been largely dominated by American scholars, whose understanding of black–white positions has been premised on homogenous racial identities, which have taken for granted that 'ethnicity' implies 'minority' or coloured status, neglecting discussion of white as a colour. As 'inbetween' and alternative colour positions make their voices heard, and those for whom colour/race is in some sense at odds with culture/ethnicity, it is necessary to rethink the role of 'ethnic' autobiography, to reconceptualize the role of colour within it, and perhaps to reject its usefulness as a category altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider some of the implications, possibilities and dangers of addressing the experience of 'madness' or 'mental illness' within autobiographical narrative: in particular, I ask how madness can be narrated, or spoken. Engaging with theoretical interventions by, amongst others, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Shoshana Felman and Maurice Blanchot, and looking at three autobiographies of madness, I suggest that an attentive reading of narrative form, as the outworking and evidence of a way of knowing and thinking about the world, may reveal authorial attempts to manage and stretch the constraints inherent in conventional narrative's tendency toward linearity and resolution. This tendency, I argue, is inimical to the expression of madness. Insinuated in this process of working with form is a particular narrative mode of existence, which has implications for the psychodynamics of living with mental distress. With reference to the work of Sarah Kofman on the representation of trauma, I propose that her conception of a 'writing without power' may be a salutary way in which to address chronic distress, and to reformulate identity in the light of biographical disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how the recent deluge of narratives about the remembrance of personal pasts has significance for teaching sociology. The paper looks at evidence of the memoir boom and examines its applications and relevance for teaching sociology and supplementing sociology courses. Many of the issues that the current crop of memoirs deal with are the very issues of sociology courses, the testimony of lives framed by sociological experience; family experiences and dysfunctions, racial and ethnic experiences, and sexual identities. The paper explores how and why memoirs can be useful tools in approaching the task of examining sociological existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the writings of Helen Keller. It is stated that in the beginning, Keller did not write neatly on paper, but deeply into the living tissue of the hand. In an autobiography, Keller described the world of the blind in the story "A tangible white darkness." It is stated that Keller's access to her world was channeled entirely through the sensuous and intimate medium of touch. In his "Notes on Automatic Writing," William James describes a case of Anna Winsor, a 19-year old girl suffering from blindness.

In this article I present a case study of the relationship between interviewer and narrator to explore the process of collaboration in the production of an auto/biography. This article outlines how the project originated and how it developed over the past six years. After introducing the narrator, Arthur Thickett—soldier, communist, pacifist, and writer—I explore our collaboration and identify those facets of the relationship that have been the most influential in shaping the interview. Michael Frisch's principle of "shared authority" influenced the working process, and collaboration was an important element of the work. This paper discusses the effect that attempting to share authority had on the project, and examines the issues raised by the collaborative process, such as who owns the material produced, who decides what material is made public, and how these decisions affect the history told. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a report on the international workshop Ourselves' Selves: Telling Life Story--Making History, held in Prague, Czech Republic, on December 7-11, 1992. Ourselves' Selves: Telling Life Story--Making History is an adventurous research and teaching project following the life-story approach in sociology. Having collected seven stages of participant's life-story narratives and written first drafts of papers based on such material, Ourselves' Selves invited several colleagues from the field to a modest international workshop on the project and its methodological and theoretical foundations. In the field of theory and methodology two main issues are interconnected in the Ourselves' Selves project: the life-story approach in sociology; the sociologist's own personal (biographical) experience and its role in her/his analyses. Ourselves' Selves first offered a methodological/theoretical presentation about risks and chances in the project and its place within contemporary sociology, especially with relation to some methodological taboos of the discipline. All texts prepared for the workshop were distributed to the participants in advance so that there was time enough for discussions.

Neoliberal interpretations of the social world reject structural explanations in favour of those that see agency as primary. This orthodoxy presents a challenge to teachers who seek to support the development of a sociological understanding, particularly where disadvantaged students are undermined by the stigma associated with these interpretations. This article explores a teaching strategy which draws upon readings of auto/biography on the part of both teachers and students to develop a critical understanding of the relationship between agency and structure. We argue that such an approach can take sociology back to its radical roots as a transformative and radicalising discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a critical analysis of Benjamin Franklin's "Autobiography." Hugh J. Dawson and Jay Fliegelman have described Franklin's elders, persuasively and influentially, as surrogate fathers, who provide paternal guidance and approbation on the model of the educative, affective family, modifying it by making it less hierarchical and intrusive. Fliegelman identifies the Autobiography's anti-patriarchal critique with its function as an attack on the fixed orders of society and the government of names. Fliegelman and Dawson insist that Franklin's eventual assertion of integrity and self-determination necessitates his abandoning these surrogates toward the end of part, because the relationships with elder mentors entail elements of dependence and artifice.

The question of what the appropriate genre terms are in which to consider the philosopher David Hume's (1711–76) My own Life (with a published version appearing in 1777 as The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by himself) is examined through the detailed discussion of 10 significant amendments, excisions and insertions that Hume made to the original manuscript. Ideas about self-biography, autobiography, philosophical autobiography, persona of the philosopher and philosopher manqué are discussed in relation to Hume's writing of the manuscript as indicated by these amendments; and the epigraphic nature of My own Life is considered in relation to Hume's work as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the memoir has become a robust trend in American publishing. If the memoir was once the preserve of eminent people and celebrities, now ordinary women and men are telling their life stories as well. This article is an attempt to identify and analyse a particular genre of this popular form of autobiographical writing – the memoir of childhood. The article examines the patterns and distinctions that can be discerned in contemporary narratives of childhood. In many memoirs of childhood, elemental motifs are discernible. In many narratives of childhood, the child inhabits either a hell (a period of remembered suffering and misery), a heaven (a period of a remembered paradise), or a purgatory (a period of a transitional social space lived between two social worlds). The article looks at examples of each of these three motifs in memoirs of childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the memoir Boy With Loaded Gun by Lewis Nordan. Similarity between Nordan and the fictional character he created, Sugar Mecklin; Liberties that have been taken with the historical fabric of Nordan's life; Dilemma of subject-oriented simultaneity in autobiographical writing.

Examines three earliest biographies of Benjamin Franklin, 1790-1793, as they relate to the 'Autobiography,' his famous attempt at self-delineation. 'Memoirs of the Late Dr. Benjamin Franklin'; 'Memoires de la Vie Privee de Benjamin Franklin'; 'The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin.'

Suggests that most of the songs of composer Irving Berlin are autobiographical and are celebrations of American life. Israel Zangwill's `The Melting-Pot'; Multi-ethnic culture; Climate of restriction and resentment toward the immigrants; `Creative ignoramus' myth; Analysis of the words and music; References; Identification with the black pianists; List of songs copyrighted and published from 1907 to 1914.

Holocaust is now almost a half century past; soon its survivors will be gone. Yet they, and others, have created a permanent archive -- texts which cross an ocean of time and pain to tell the story of Auschwitz. We examine three texts of the Holocaust -- U.S. newspapers, survivors' memoirs and oral testimony. We compare unique voices within and between texts. Newspapers reported the Holocaust early and often, yet minimized its importance. Memoirs, though all from survivors of Auschwitz, varied widely in content as well as form; female voices often told different stories than their male counterparts; earlier works were distinct from later ones. Like memoirs, videotaped testimonies ranged widely; some were literary, coherent and articulate; others were contradictory non-narratives -- fragments of confusion and fear. We conclude with a reflexive note, pondering the dilemmas posed by a scholarly study of the Holocaust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]