Download Free The Uses Of Autobiography Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Uses Of Autobiography and write the review.

Various encounters helped us transform what was originally just a response to a trendy 1980s phrase--Get A life!--into the pointed yet heterogeneous engagement with everyday practices that we believe this collection represents. Papers submitted for the session on the everyday uses of autobiography at the Modern Language Association's convention in 1992 enabled us to connect with scholars around the country.
These essays on the problems and functions of biography - particularly those of writers, thinkers and artists - investigate a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture.
First Published in 1995. Autobiography is commonly understood in terms of giving readers insight into the private lives of unique individuals, but in recent years the autobiographical project has absorbed a wide variety of social concerns. The contributors to this book explore a range of the uses of autobiography from the nineteenth-century to the present day, and from Africa, USA, the Middle East, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters draw on a number of approaches, including historical and literary methods to represent the autobiography's purpose of establishing communities of interest and social change.
First Published in 1995. Autobiography is commonly understood in terms of giving readers insight into the private lives of unique individuals, but in recent years the autobiographical project has absorbed a wide variety of social concerns. The contributors to this book explore a range of the uses of autobiography from the nineteenth-century to the present day, and from Africa, USA, the Middle East, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters draw on a number of approaches, including historical and literary methods to represent the autobiography's purpose of establishing communities of interest and social change.
Birren has conducted more than twenty-five years of autobiography groups, where participants recall, write, and share their life stories. He offers "how-to" tips for organizing, complementing, and understanding oral history works. He finds that the exercise is rewarding for adults entering periods of transitions, such as the elderly population, and encourages the sharing of experiences with others on the same journey.
This book promises to be the first of its kind: a philosophical investigation of autobiographical writing. All of us are autobiographers at least some of the time, and all of us crave certain kinds of recognition and confirmation from others, just as we fear blame and reproach from those who know us well. The philosophy of autobiography examines this fundamental story-telling process and its place in our lives. As such it straddles a number of long-standing philosophical questions, having to do with the meaning of life, the problems of autonomy and responsibility and authenticity, the nature of self-deception and bad faith, the structure of the self and its existence through time, the question of the reliability and meaning of memory, and the problem of understanding another person and imaginatively identifying with him. The contributors to the volume are mostly philosophers, but many of them have interests outside philosophy and have been informed by research findings from literary theory and from psychiatry. Some of the contributors are also literary theorists, and one of them has even published autobiographical work. Contributors also examine specific autobiographies and diaries, of philosophers and non-philosophers, as well as fictional works using an autobiographical format, in order to explore the philosophical implications and presuppositions of the genre. The result is a most useful and productive interdisciplinary exchange."
projects, and an extensive bibliography. --Book Jacket.
Twelve-year-old Francis gets a chance to go for a year to San Fernando to work as a servant-companion to old Mrs. Chandler, but he has never seen a town before or been away from the warmth of his family.
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin From the Paperback edition.
In The Limits of Autobiography, Leigh Gilmore analyzes texts that depict trauma by combining elements of autobiography, fiction, biography, history, and theory in ways that challenge the constraints of autobiography. Astute and compelling readings of works by Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dorothy Allison, Mikal Gilmore, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jeanette Winterson explore how each poses the questions "How have I lived?" and "How will I live?" in relation to the social and psychic forms within which trauma emerges. First published in 2001, this new edition of one of the foundational texts in trauma studies includes a new preface by the author that assesses the gravitational pull between life writing and trauma in the twenty-first century, a tension that continues to produce innovative and artful means of confronting kinship, violence, and self-representation.