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This book explores the contradictions of biography. It charts shifting approaches to the writing and reading of biographies, from post-hagiographical attitudes of the Enlightenment, heroic biographies of Romanticism and irreverent modernist portraits through to contemporary experiments in politically committed and hybrid forms of life writing. The book shows how biographical texts in fact destabilise the models of historical visibility, cultural prominence and narrative coherence that the genre itself seems to uphold. Addressing the fraught relationships between genre and gender, private and public, image and text, life and narrative that play out in the modern biographical tradition, Metabiography suggests new possibilities for reading, writing and thinking about this enduringly popular genre.
In historiography, many interesting theoretical perspectives on biography have emerged in recent years, from forensics to structure and microhistory. Biographers themselves, though, often fear the study of the genre - needlessly, as these eighteen engaging new essays demonstrate.
Situated at the intersection between medical humanities, aging studies, autobiographical studies, disability studies and ethic studies, this book explores the fascination of centenarians' autobiographies for humanites research. It can be argued that the growing presence of centenarians' autobiographies on book markets across the globe may by rooted in the public's desire for positive images of aging, in contrast to the image of inevitable decay.
This collection explores the multifarious manifestations of gender intrinsic to national ideologies, the use of gender in the construction and development of nation states, and the role of political, literary, and cinematographic discourses in cultural debates that define national and international borders in post-colonial societies. The selected essays focus primarily on Europe and Latin America and consider the implications of colonialism, dictatorship, and the transition to democracy on national identities as well as the deliberate use of gendered language and images in the development of discourses of hegemony, frequently used to underpin support for individual political regimes, or as a call to arms to defend national patrimony. (Series: Cultural Studies / Kulturwissenschaft / Estudios Culturales / Etudes Culturelles, Vol. 55) [Subject: Gender Studies, Politics, Sociology, Cultural Studies]
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. In the volume, edited by biography scholars Hans Renders and Binne de Haan, specifically the connections between biography and the fields of microhistory, journalism, and Life Writing illuminate key challenges and problems in studying individual lives. Different perspectives are provided on the ways in which biography contributes to scholarship in the humanities in general and academic historiography in particular. The contributing authors are academic experts in these fields and include Richard D. Brown, Carlo Ginzburg, Nigel Hamilton, Marlene Kadar, Giovanni Levi, Sabina Loriga, Matti Peltonen, and James Walter.
Volume 18 in the series Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies is entitled Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts. It is edited by Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova and Andrea Hammel, and is intended as a companion volume to Volume 17, which focused on literature and the press. This new volume considers the life and work of exiled women politicians, academics and artists, among others, examining the ways – both positive and negative - in which their exile affected them. The sixteen contributions, which are in English or German, set out to throw new light on aspects of gendered relations and experiences of women in exile in Great Britain and Ireland. Contributors are: Jana Barbora Buresova, Rachel Dickson, Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Gisela Holfter, Hadwig Kraeutler, Ulrike Krippner, Dieter Krohn, Gertrud Lenz, Bea Lewkowicz, Sarah MacDougall, John March, Iris Meder, Irene Messenger, Merilyn Moos, Felicitas M. Starr-Egger, Jennifer Taylor, Gaby Weiner.
The fundamental idea of this book is to show – based on the example of Oswald Menghin, Minister of Education of the National Socialist Austrian “Anschluss”-government, and the networks surrounding him – how science and politics were interwoven in Austria in the first half of the 20th century and how the ideas and networks created in that milieu outlasted the alleged caesurae of this period and found continuation in post-war South America. As Menghin traversed an astonishing number of political upheavals and changes – time after time in exalted positions –, his biography may be considered as paradigmatic for the Age of Extremes. The following aspects form the core interest of this book: (1) Menghin’s position in the political and scientific field, as well as the interconnection between these spheres. (2) The transnational entanglement between the two central areas of Menghin’s geographic spheres of action. (3) Continuities and changes both in Menghin’s biography and in a broader political and scientific context in Austria and Argentina. (4) Menghin’s scope of action and the extent of his responsibility for crucial and often dire developments in all these facets.
Philosophy typically ignores biographical, historical, and cultural aspects of theoriss’ lives in an attempt to take a supposedly abstract and objective view of their work. This book makes some new conclusions about Arendt’s theory by emphasizing how her experience of the world as displayed in her archival materials impacted her thought. Some aspects of Arendt’s life have been examined in detail before, including the fact she was stateless as well as her affair with Heidegger. Instead, this work explores different topics including the biographical and narrative moments of Arendt's own work, the role of archiving in her thought, pivotal events that have not been archived, her understand...
"When your friends call on you to take to the streets and demand the fall of the regime, this presses a practical predicament that we all address, often implicitly, in our everyday lives: is this regime legitimate? Facing Authority investigates the ways in which this question of legitimacy can be addressed in theory and practice, in the face of disagreement and uncertainty. Instead of asking "what makes authorities legitimate?" in the abstract, it examines how the question of legitimacy manifests itself in practice. How can we distinguish whether a regime is legitimate, or merely purports to be so? And what does it mean to do this well? Facing Authority proposes that judging legitimacy is no...
The legendary Russian biography series, The Lives of Remarkable People, has played a significant role in Russian culture from its inception in 1890 until today. The longest running biography series in world literature, it spans three centuries and widely divergent political and cultural epochs: Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia. The authors argue that the treatment of biographical figures in the series is a case study for continuities and changes in Russian national identity over time. Biography in Russia and elsewhere remains a most influential literary genre and the distinctive approach and branding of the series has made it the economic engine of its publisher, Molodaia gvardiia. T...