The Biographical Turn

The Biographical Turn PDF Author: Hans Renders
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315469561
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Biographical Turn showcases the latest research through which the field of biography is being explored. Fifteen leading scholars in the field present the biographical perspective as a scholarly research methodology, investigating the consequences of this bottom-up approach and illuminating its value for different disciplines. While biography has been on the rise in academia since the 1980s, this volume highlights the theoretical implications of the biographical turn that is changing the humanities. Chapters cover subjects such as gender, religion, race, new media and microhistory, presenting biography as as a research methodology suited not only for historians but also for explorations in areas including literature studies, sociology, economics and politics. By emphasizing agency, the use of primary sources and the critical analysis of context and historiography, this book demonstrates how biography can function as a scholarly methodology for a wide range of topics and fields of research. International in scope, The Biographical Turn emphasizes that the individual can have a lasting impact on the past and that lives that are now forgotten can be as important for the historical narrative as the biographies of kings and presidents. It is a valuable resource for all students of biography, history and historical theory.

The Biographical Turn

The Biographical Turn PDF Author: Hans Renders
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315469561
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book

Book Description
The Biographical Turn showcases the latest research through which the field of biography is being explored. Fifteen leading scholars in the field present the biographical perspective as a scholarly research methodology, investigating the consequences of this bottom-up approach and illuminating its value for different disciplines. While biography has been on the rise in academia since the 1980s, this volume highlights the theoretical implications of the biographical turn that is changing the humanities. Chapters cover subjects such as gender, religion, race, new media and microhistory, presenting biography as as a research methodology suited not only for historians but also for explorations in areas including literature studies, sociology, economics and politics. By emphasizing agency, the use of primary sources and the critical analysis of context and historiography, this book demonstrates how biography can function as a scholarly methodology for a wide range of topics and fields of research. International in scope, The Biographical Turn emphasizes that the individual can have a lasting impact on the past and that lives that are now forgotten can be as important for the historical narrative as the biographies of kings and presidents. It is a valuable resource for all students of biography, history and historical theory.

The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science

The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science PDF Author: Prue Chamberlayne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134585373
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Biographical research methods have become a useful and popular tool for contemporary social scientists. This book combines an exploration of the historical and philosophical origins of this important field of qualitative research with comparative examples of the different ways that biographical methods have been successfully applied internationally. Through these many illustrative examples of socio-biography in process the authors show how formal textual analysis, whilst uncovering hidden emotional defences, can also shed light on wider historical processes of societal transformation. Topics discussed include: *individual and linked lives *generational change *political influences on memory and identity *biographical work in reflexive societies *narrativity and empowerment in professional practice *ways of theorising and generalising from case-studies. Biographical Methods in the Social Sciences promotes debate and provides opportunities for students and researchers to widen their uses of narrative research.

How to Make It as a Woman

How to Make It as a Woman PDF Author: Alison Booth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226065464
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Publisher Description

Using Biographical Methods in Social Research

Using Biographical Methods in Social Research PDF Author: Barbara Merrill
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 141292958X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Using Biographical Methods in Social Research provides an informative, comprehensive, accessible and practical guide to the nature and use of biographical methods, combining a consideration of theoretical issues with practical guidance as well as reflections on the personal experience of doing research. Barbara Merrill and Linden West consider important questions about who and what research is for and what makes it valid, alongside the practical business of interviewing, transcribing, analyzing and writing up of biographical data. The authors draw on their sociological and psychological orientations to provide a truly interdisciplinary approach to the subject, and provide numerous examples of biographical research across the social sciences. This book will equip students with all the skills necessary to undertake biographical research as well as to fully understand what they are doing and the assumptions they make about the nature of truth, knowledge, story telling and being human. It will be useful for students and researchers using biographical methods in a range of disciplines, including sociology, social policy, social psychology, health care and education.

Theoretical Discussions of Biography

Theoretical Discussions of Biography PDF Author: Hans Renders
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004274707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing offers comprehensive overviews by 14 academic scholars of the actual state of the field of Biography Studies, specifically by connecting biography with microhistory, journalism, and Life Writing.

Unbuttoned

Unbuttoned PDF Author: Christopher Dummitt
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773549390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King's death, the public was bombarded with stories about "Weird Willie," the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King's character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives. Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King's diary and details the specific decisions of King's literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King's diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King's diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation. Presenting extensive archival research in a captivating narrative, Unbuttoned traces the rise of a political culture that privileged the individual as the ultimate source of truth, and made Canadians rethink what they wanted to know about politicians.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs PDF Author: Walter Isaacson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451648545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Draws on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with family members, friends, competitors, and colleagues to offer a look at the co-founder and leading creative force behind the Apple computer company.

Biographical Objects

Biographical Objects PDF Author: Janet Hoskins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136678646
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In this innovative study, six women and men from Eastern Indonesia narrate their own lives by talking about their possessions--domestic objects used to construct a coherent identity through a process of identification and self-historicizing. Janet Hoskins explores how things are given biographical significance and entangled in sexual politics, expressed in dualistic metaphors where the familiar distinctions between person and object and female and male are drawn in unfamiliar ways. Biographical Objects is an ethnography of persons which takes the form of a study of things, showing how the object is not only a metaphor for the self but a pivot for reflexivity and introspection, a tool for autobiographic elaboration, a way of knowing oneself through things.

Biography and the Black Atlantic

Biography and the Black Atlantic PDF Author: Lisa A. Lindsay
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812245466
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In this volume, leading historians reflect on the recent biographical turn in studies of slavery and the modern African diaspora. This collection presents vivid glimpses into the lives of remarkable enslaved and formerly enslaved people who moved, struggled, and endured in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic world.

The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History

The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History PDF Author: Ivor Goodson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317665716
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
In recent decades, there has been a substantial turn towards narrative and life history study. The embrace of narrative and life history work has accompanied the move to postmodernism and post-structuralism across a wide range of disciplines: sociological studies, gender studies, cultural studies, social history; literary theory; and, most recently, psychology. Written by leading international scholars from the main contributing perspectives and disciplines, The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History seeks to capture the range and scope as well as the considerable complexity of the field of narrative study and life history work by situating these fields of study within the historical and contemporary context. Topics covered include: • The historical emergences of life history and narrative study • Techniques for conducting life history and narrative study • Identity and politics • Generational history • Social and psycho-social approaches to narrative history With chapters from expert contributors, this volume will prove a comprehensive and authoritative resource to students, researchers and educators interested in narrative theory, analysis and interpretation.