Search

This article uses campaign reports and memoir literature to explore tsarist officers' views of masculinity—both their own and that of their opponents—during the conquest of the Caucasus, focusing particularly on the Nicolaevan era. It frames conquest as a form of cultural exchange and argues that tsarist officers' understandings of the gender order of both their own and combatant societies were a critical component of this cultural exchange. In particular, stereotypically feminine traits like mercy and gentleness were important to the cultural script of conquest in the Caucasus. To offer mercy implied the right to punish, a right which had to constantly be reasserted; the assertion of authority was deeply gendered and necessitated the subordination of local men. A case study of ritual humiliation during the conquest of the Caucasus illustrates how this worked in practice: disrupting the customary gender relations of a combatant society to remove opposing men from their authoritative role and installing an imperial officer at the top of the hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the consensus that silences about mental disorders are there to be broken. While silence in mental disorders can be painful, even deadly, the consensus rests on an oversimplified understanding of silence. Drawing upon accounts from depression and bipolar memoirs, this article names and analyses some salient experiences of silence in mood disorders. It does so with two goals in mind. The first is to show that mood disorders may involve several different kinds of lived experiences of silence. This is important because even though silence is considered a promising objective symptom of depression, little has been written about lived experiences of silence in disorders that involve depression. The second is to argue against the fetishisation of breaking silence and the concomitant understandings of silence as an externally imposed and inherently negative phenomenon. This is important because some silences are not experienced as external and are even felt to be valuable, meaning that efforts to break them may be counterproductive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Method Discussion Conclusion Recovery from depression constitutes a long journey that is understood as a unique and multifaceted process encompassing various dimensions. To understand what constitutes recovery from depression and to develop greater insights into the unique dimensions of the recovery journey, the study of recovery memoirs is essential.This article performs a dimensional analysis on six Indian first‐hand accounts of recovery from depression collected in Amrita Tripathi and Arpita Anand's Real Stories of Dealing with Depression to examine the journeys toward healing and the uniqueness of the recovery processes. Through the dimensional analysis, four core dimensions of recovery from depression—Problems, Social Supports, Position of Recovery and Functionality—are identified. The process of recovery, consisting of understanding the problems (causes) through sensed adversities (sensed effects), making use of received social supports to transform oneself, finding out the position of recovery, and lastly, functioning peacefully for living, corresponds to the four dimensions of recovery. Drawing on Herbert Blumer's theory of social interactionism, the article examines how different individuals interpret their experiences of depression in unique ways and develop distinctive recovery strategies.The identified dimensions of recovery correspond to the need for unique approaches to recovery articulated by each of the narrators. The selected narratives reveal that the problems are unique, and for each of the unique problems, there has to be a distinctive support mechanism. The recovery narratives are centred around the unique problems wherein the individuals attempt to understand what happened to them and why it happened.The article concludes by suggesting that healthcare practitioners can utilise the dimensions and the subdimensions as a lead to understand fully how their clients conceptualise their problems and try to understand how each client defines the recovery itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centers on the life of the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican bureaucrat Mustafa Reşat to investigate how he turned into a genocide technocrat. It examines his career and decisions at critical junctions and depicts him as an outstanding representative of a category of perpetrators who prepare the propitious infrastructure, ground, and climate for such large-scale violence as the Armenian Genocide. By shifting the perspective to the type, scale, and level of perpetrating violence, this paper sheds light on how Mustafa Reşat used his administrative and political knowledge and experience to serve Talat Pasha, who was already organizing the deportation and extermination of Armenians. Drawing upon hitherto unmined sources such as his memoirs, it demonstrates how an ultranationalist and dedicated Ottoman bureaucrat played a pivotal role in determining the main contours of the Turkish state’s mindset on the “Armenian and Kurdish Questions”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gendered order in the Soviet camp system shaped women inmates’ experiences of labour and factored in their survival. This article zooms in on the published memoirs of four women political prisoners who survived the Gulag and explores how they experienced and narrated carceral labour. It focuses on three types of labour taking place in the carceral setting – forced labour, care work and clandestine crafts – and investigates the gendered dynamics that surrounded each of these interrelated types of labour. Historically‐situated forms of women inmates’ constrained labour‐related agency, as the memoirs show, were diverse and not always limited to outright resistance or compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his memoir Born a Crime and Other Stories (2016), stand-up comedian Trevor Noah, draws on the thematic concerns of his stand-up performances, as he documents his experiences of racial passing in apartheid and then post-apartheid South Africa. Noah's reflections on these experiences of passing are integral to shaping his commentary on how racial identities are constructed and perceived. In this article, I will examine how Noah's racial passing narrative expands upon depictions of and commentaries on race presented within works of South African racial passing memoir writing. As I will demonstrate, Noah's use of elements of humour and imagination in constructing his childhood self's perceptions of the racialized world, positions his persona as one that contrasts that of the tragic mulatto as it is represented in other works of South African racial passing memoir writing. Through this contrast, I will suggest that Noah's memoir challenges the notion that one's identity is restricted and limited by systems of racial categorization by reflecting on how race can, in fact, be interpreted as a site of creative expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life-writing by punks has grown at a remarkable rate and constitutes a significant new addition to the canon of punk cultural production that deserves an equal place alongside music, fashion, and zines. Punk has always sought to document itself in the form of recordings, film, photography, fanzines, and video. It is time to add memoirs to these archival impulses and examine how punk culture is now mediated and sustained by autobiography. Whereas punk life writing might be dismissed as so many nostalgic trips down memory lane, this article begins from the premise that writing about a life involves more than nostalgia. Considering punk memoirs as works that offer new ways of thinking about a life attached to punk, this article surveys a broad range of punk memoirs and asks questions that reframe some punk scholarship by emphasizing how individuals live within and outside of punk simultaneously. What are some of the dominant features of punk memoirs? What kinds of interventions do they make? How do they introduce and develop particular ways of documenting and thinking about punk culture and its legacies? How does life writing about the past transform punk in the present? What ways of thinking, lines of inquiry, understanding, and feelings do memoirs establish and examine as central to the thought of punk, in particular, and the study of culture more broadly? The article seeks to demonstrate how these trajectories might shift and renovate work undertaken by scholars of punk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue 36.3 of the Journal of Popular Music Studies focuses on various conversations surrounding human/tech relations in popular music performance. The Field Notes section includes interviews with rock drummer Stan Lynch, DJ Ian Friday, Lauren Alex O'Hagan, and musician and mathematician Project.JDM, exploring the impact of technology on music and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The peer-reviewed articles cover topics such as punk memoirs, the role of music journalism in categorizing "indie rap," the hardcore punk powerviolence scene in Southern California, and the wealth gap between Afrobeats artists Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage. The issue concludes with book reviews on Bob Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song, Shana Goldin-Perschbacher's Queer Country, Joshua Clover's Roadrunner, Francesca Royster's Black Country Music, and LJ Müller's Hearing Sexism. [Extracted from the article]

Geographers have regularly employed biography as a means to an end, that is, as a useful method for the investigation of some other phenomenon. But writing, reading, and collecting biographical memoirs has an inherent and not just an instrumental value. Linked to memory, biography becomes a way of recalling lives, including those not personally known to the reader, and remembering how one's own life and work is connected to those of predecessors and, by implication, those of successors. This article examines how biography can be used to foster an inclusive and diverse picture of the discipline which more fully appreciates the difficulties many geographers have overcome to pursue their geographical work, and the unnamed collaborators – colleagues, friends, and family – who supported them in their work. Portraiture is introduced as a complement to written memoir, as a subject which would bear further scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it mean for a white historian to write a memoir about his mixed-race older brother? Examining the challenge of writing across the borders of race and history and drawing on the work of memoirists and historians who have written about their own family histories, this essay reflects on memory, guilt, and gratitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a profile of Pat Jordan, a former baseball player turned writer. It explores his baseball career, which fell short of expectations, and his subsequent success as a writer. The article also mentions his memoirs, particularly one that focuses on his relationship with renowned pitcher Tom Seaver. The author of the article meets with Pat Jordan to seek guidance on writing a biography and describes their meeting and Pat's home. The text details the author's experiences spending time with Pat and his wife Susie, including conversations about writing, Pat's novels, and the author's own writing project on Gene Locklear, a baseball player and artist. Pat offers feedback on the author's writing and encourages him to enhance his descriptions. The author reflects on his time with Pat and writes an article about him in Pat Jordan's distinctive style. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides a review of three biographies that examine the lives of women in different historical contexts. The first biography, "The Perfect Fascist" by Victoria de Grazia, delves into the life of Attilio Teruzzi, a devoted follower of Mussolini, and the significant roles that women played in his life. The second biography, "Empire's Mistress" by Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, tells the story of Isabel Rosario Cooper, an actress in the Philippines who was often overshadowed by her relationship with General Douglas MacArthur. The third biography, "Woman between Two Kingdoms" by Leslie Castro-Woodhouse, explores the life of Dara Rasami and her experiences as an outsider in Siam's royal court. These biographies offer valuable insights into the complex lives of these women and their interactions with larger historical events. Additionally, the article discusses two related books that further explore the lives of Isabel Rosario Cooper and Dara Rasani, providing intimate details through personal documents and photographs. These books will be of interest to scholars and students studying gender studies, Asian studies, and Thai history, as they shed light on the struggles for agency and independence faced by women in patriarchal societies. [Extracted from the article]

Shilpa Raj's memoir The Elephant Chaser's Daughter (2017) and Yashica Dutt's Coming Out as a Dalit: A Memoir (2019) map a specific kind of individual trauma, along with the cultural trauma that is found in other Dalit life writings. Both the narratives begin with the death of another Dalit individual whom the memoirists consider as a sibling/comrade who lacked the partial 'privilege' they enjoyed and the narratives can be read as negotiating this survivor's guilt. Hence, these life writings are part elegies and part literature of protest. They are also part of biographies, for while the writer's life story is one centre, these writings also have another centre – the real/imagined life of the dead person. As the writers compare and contrast their different destinies, we argue that these narratives (1) lay bare the complexities and limits of Dalit emancipation in modern India where the caste question has been seemingly resolved (2) call for an extension of the intersectional framework to analyse the concept of 'partial privilege' in Dalit life-writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses intertextuality in Stanisław Lem's novel, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1961). An analysis of Memoirs discovers references to numerous works of literature (Kafka, Borges, Gombrowicz, Mrożek, Chekhov, Gogol, Shakespeare, Mickiewicz, Ray Bradbury, Genet, and Jan Potocki, among others), philosophy (Cassirer, Peirce, Lévinas), religion, popular culture, and unwritten lore (the Bible, Greek mythology, songs, proverbs, aphorisms, rhymes, and toasts). However, careful examination reveals that it is extremely difficult to draw the line between connections intended by the author and those which are accidental or read into the text by critics or readers. That is because in Memoirs, Lem designed a work which is intertextually open, capable of establishing a virtually infinite number of relations with other texts and contexts, and encouraging its reader to recognize all possible links. Intertextual references operate here collectively rather than as relationships with individual works. Locating Memoirs in a vast, practically unlimited intertextual space does not lead to specific, premeditated meanings, but rather serves to multiply potential senses. In the article, this intertextual strategy is paired with Lem's theory that the meaning of a literary work is unstable and is fully developed in the process of individual reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to understand the content and aesthetic of the graphic novel Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability, in determining if its nature could be understood as a work of the avant-garde. In order to do so, the article will closely examine the aesthetic style employed by the author, the essence of the story, the content and the nature of its publication. These aspects will then be linked to the various understandings of the avant-garde to find out whether the graphic novel resonates with the principles of questioning ideas, methodologies and power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jayanta Mahapatra's literary corpus is versatile and reflective to the windows of the world. His Door of Paper: Essays and Memoirs (2007) is the finest flowering ever written by an Indian English poet compared to the theory of poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and T. S. Eliot. He is the only Indian English poet who wrote the issues related to poetry about how to write poetry, the freedom of poetry, the silence of poetry and the timeframe of poetry and the significance of poetry. His pioneering book Door of Paper: Essays and Memoirs (2007) encompasses his autobiographical strain as well his ideas of poetry as felt during his composition of poetry. What Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Arnold and T. S. Eliot highlighted in their theory of poetry is also reflected in his ideas of poetry. So, this article attempts to highlight how Mahapatra's book Door Of Paper signifies his ideas about the freedom of poetry, process of poetic composition, the silence of poetry, the timeframe of poetry and the significance of poetry as compared to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Arnold and T. S. Eliot's theory of poetry and how his ideas reflects to his own poetry also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the reflection of contemporary artist Muhanned Cader about Sri Lanka. Topics mentioned include a description of Cader's exhibition depicting colonial myths and modes of visuality relating to biology, meteorology, photography and cartography, the history of Ceylon, and a brief highlights of Cader's educational and career background.

The Society for French Studies has recognized several individuals for their doctoral research in French and Francophone Studies. The theses cover a wide range of topics, such as personal writing by Protestant refugees, the influence of darkness on nocturnal experiences in Paris, the portrayal of sexual violence in literature and film, the definition of French horror in the 21st century, the reinvention of seventeenth-century French court ballet, the construction of African postcolonial female authorial identities, the practices of travelling theatre troupes in France, and the preservation of Louisiana French and Pennsylvania German through life narratives. These theses offer valuable insights into various subjects within literature, art, and cultural studies, and can be a valuable resource for library patrons conducting research in related areas. [Extracted from the article]

Children are, more or less, voiceless—historically, within society, and even throughout literature. Particularly in the realms of life writing, children's voicelessness is no more on display (or rather, a lack of display). We've yet to allow them their voice divorced from the 'safer' confines of fiction. Why? Utilising my doctoral research at the University of Nottingham, where I explore this strange phenomenon via creative experimentation of my debut memoir alongside critical exploration of life writing's 'limits', my essay highlights said voicelessness of child narrators within life writing, questioning this seemingly exclusive reign of the traditional adult narrator. Applying a semi-autoethnographic exploration of my earliest life writings, I aim to expose this gap in both learning and creativity, championing the inherent enlightenment child narration begets, and suggesting an untapped resource at play. Truth is not gate-kept to the mouths of adults; and in advocating for experimental life writing, we must ask ourselves how narratorial freedoms have (or have not), and should be, considered when it comes to stories inherited from truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Mary Wollstonecraft's death in 1798, her grieving husband William Godwin made public many of the details of Wollstonecraft's highly unconventional life. The ensuing backlash seemed to ensure that Wollstonecraft's major works ceased to be reprinted for a period of roughly forty years. This article contributes to efforts to revise narratives of Wollstonecraft's early nineteenth century reception by asking how and where readers, in the absence of new editions, might have accessed the books themselves. A survey of 41 circulating and subscription library catalogues dated between 1799 and 1842 reveals that, despite scholarly assumptions otherwise, Wollstonecraft's works remained widely available. Even when books left the library, they did not necessarily disappear, as a copy of Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman that moved from a circulating library into a private collection attests. Placing the information in these catalogues in conversation with what can be gleaned from this copy of the work, this article argues that the durability of the hand-press book complicates the narrative of Wollstonecraft's posthumous reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil evokes a range of emotions, from the promise of prosperity to the reality of environmental degradation and corporate greed. A growing number of graphic narratives (such as Gasoline Dreams) are exploring the 'cruel optimism,' to use Lauren Berlant's term, of oil. Crude: A Memoir is one such graphic narrative that through the memories of Pablo Fajardo exposes the intricate networks of extraction, the paraphernalia of the corporation-state nexus, and the contradictions of petromodernity through the use of visual storytelling techniques such as point of view, focalisation, and colour palette. This graphic narrative solicits an empathetic response from its readers by revealing the ethical and affective aspects of this environmental disaster. Drawing insights from energy humanities and comics studies, this article, through the close reading of Crude: A Memoir, investigates the toxicities of oil-modernity, the role of state infrastructure, and the global matrixes of power. Put together, Crude performs a kind of grassroot justice in that the memoir names the abusers who seem to be immune to justice, shows the plight of the Indigenous 'collateral damage' and the environmental degradation that result when legal protections are not afforded to those most vulnerable (including human, plant, animal, water, and mineral entities). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political conflict has plagued Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region of Hindu-majority India, ever since the partition. The crisis worsened by the end of the 1980s and has continued to disrupt peace in the valley to date. The conflict arguably entered a new phase as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was elected to power in 2014, which also joined the ruling coalition of the Jammu and Kashmir state in 2015 for the first time. Over this period, Kashmir's resistance evolved into subtler forms, including cultural expressions like memoirs. Published in 2021, Farah Bashir's debut work, Rumours of Spring, is a deeply personal yet undeniably political exploration of the crisis in Kashmir from its aggravated phase in the beginning of the 1990s. This paper argues that the nuanced depiction of the crisis in the memoir demands an intersectional reading of the traumatising impact of militarisation and militarism on Kashmir's everyday life, especially given the subject position of the narrator as a Muslim woman. The works on militarisation by Jacklyn Cock, as employed by Samreen Mushtaq to analyse the situation in Kashmir, provide theoretical insights for this reading. Set in Kashmir's identitarian conflict, the Muslim identity is central to the narrative. We argue that in Bashir's memoir, religion finds a complex representation, with the Qur'an and Kashmiri folklore serving as respites in times of crisis, even as the fundamentalist factions contribute to their oppressive reality. Bashir's work openly engages with the experience of being a Muslim in Hindu India. The paper also attempts to place the work in a larger corpus of life-writing by women in conflict zones, comparing the work with Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries (2003), a Palestinian memoir by Suad Amiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how sensory experiences or affects intersect with the everyday in Sarah Joseph's memoir, "Aaru Nee." Cited are how the connections between Joseph and her social relations animate her everyday life, the space-time of the memoir that can be seen as contesting the devaluation of everyday life, and critical engagements wherein the examination of ordinary affects in the memoir were built.

This article contributes to a social history of Swedish broadcasting through an analysis of a movement for media reform: the Swedish Women's Associations' Radio Committee, formed in 1933 and operating until 1940. The committee was a joint effort by many established women's organisations in Sweden, formed with the goal of strengthening the role of women in the developing public service radio, and especially providing a platform for women to raise demands on influence in the decision-making around the development of this new media form. In this article, I analyse the Swedish Women's Associations' Radio Committee and their work in the 1930s and ask what they did, how they did it, and with what effects? In what ways can their work be understood as a movement for media reform? The analysis builds on archival material documenting the Swedish Women's Associations' Radio Committee, as well as secondary sources such as memoirs and newspaper materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is the mutual representation of the process of artistic writing in the memoirs of Bohumila Grögerová Můj labyrint [My Labyrinth] and in the novel Točité věty [Winding Sentences] by Daniela Hodrová, which came into existence concurrently with the two authors in close contact. Other pieces by these authors, though of different genres, may be read as an artistic dialogue as well: a dialogue with mythologies, historical figures and cultural traditions, the values and knowledge that these authors share and represent, sometimes in a similar way and sometimes in a different one, while employing narrative strategies typical both of modernist and postmodernist poetics, balancing between dream and reality, fictionality, fictionalization and authenticity. A selection of topics (language, speech, writing; individual and collective; textual subjects; myth and novel; memory and oblivion) are analyzed, and a comparison of modes of representation and their functions in the texts as related to the world of ideas of both authors is undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to present a preliminary analysis of the interrelations between Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Giornale di guerra e di prigionia and the extensive textual corpus it belongs to: the autobiographical writings of the Great War. While acknowledging the originality and literary merit of the volume, which already exhibits the author’s extraordinary expressive, linguistic, and narrative qualities, the text cannot be fully apprehended without a more specific alignment with the historical circumstances in which it was conceived and elaborated, and with the vast array of testimonial writings born from the same war experience. Indeed, Gadda’s Giornale reflects a shared atmosphere and appropriates a series of recurrent topoi found throughout the memoirs of the era, albeit adapting and transforming them within the framework of a work possessing undisputed documentary and literary value.

The following article is a meditation on Ralph Waldo Emerson's intellectual genealogy as traced by Cornel West, highlighting and enacting memoir as a literary gesture central to this mode, and proposes that Norman O. Brown be included in that genealogy. The article also features original research that the author conducted at the UCSC Norman O. Brown archive, with special attention given to his lecture series, "The Challenge of Islam: The Prophetic Tradition" (1980–1981). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This publication is a fragment of the memoirs of M.V. Neustrueva (1885–1961), written in the mid-second half of the 1950s, and opens a cycle of two articles, the first of which, “Lyosha and Manichka,” deals primarily with the first period of the memoirist’s acquaintance with the future writer A.N. Tolstoy, dating from the late 1890s to the middle of 1900s. In her memoirs, Neustrueva describes her acquaintance and meetings with Tolstoy, amateur performances in which they took part together, and several episodes dating back to the time when Tolstoy had already become a student and was returning to Samara on vacation. The publication accompanies the memoirs of Maria Neustrueva with an introductory article, which reconstructs the biography of the memoirist and the history of her work on them using available sources. Memoirs of M.V. Neustrueva are published for the first time.

The document Impressions of a Juror is analyzed as a personal account of an anonymous author, G.S.N., who recounted his experiences as a juror in legal proceedings in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. Both external and internal criticism of the source is conducted, facilitating the establishment of the approximate place, time, and purpose of its creation. Furthemore, the socio-psychological portrait of the author is reconstructed, considering aspects such as social affiliation, level of education, place of residence, and certain psychological characteristics. The analysis acknowledges the uniqueness of Impressions of a Juror, which not being a part of mainstream historical sources, remain a distinctive work. On the other hand, it shares characteristics inherent in other personal documents from jurors of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century, particularly regarding its general character, presentation style, and the scope of covered issues. It is noted that the factual value of the source under consideration is limited, as it does not allow for the comprehensive reconstruction of the judiciary and legal proceedings in the Russian Empire, nor does it facilitate a complete understanding of the criminal cases under consideration. Despite these limitations, the conclusion is drawn that Impressions of a Juror holds cognitive value due to its provision of information not found in other historical sources. The document offers details that breathe like into the specifics that were previously only studied on the basis on normative legal texts, and official statistics. Thus while the source may not provide an all-encompassing view of the legal landscate of the Russian Empire, it contributes a unique perspective that enriches the understanding of historical proceedings.

In this paper, I will draw on two twentieth-century French writers and extract from their works their ideas about memory and memoir writing. The first, the poet and philosopher Charles Péguy wrote a great deal about memory, bringing the philosophy of Henri Bergson into realms of daily life that the philosopher himself did not. Not all of Péguy’s meditations on memory are related to memoir writings, and yet they provide a possible frame for anyone who would want to engage in such a task. I will focus on some of his points about time and aging, give some examples from his projected confessions, and relate them to the writing of memoirs as he saw it. The second author, Romain Gary was a prolific novelist, whose works were among the greatest best sellers in post-War France. I will focus on his literary memoir, Promise at Dawn. Gary does not write directly about memoir writing. His ideas on it are embedded in his autobiographical narration, however, and it is these ideas that I shall extract and illustrate. Much separates these two authors’ views on memory and memoirs. Despite their differences, I would like to argue that both authors focus on the ethics of memory and memory writing. That ethics revolves not so much on telling the literal truth, the getting this or that detail correctly, but in capturing and conveying the commitments that have marked one’s life, and capturing them in such a way that they do not coincide with the current pieties about the past. Memoir writing for both authors is a way of responding to the times, a kind of critique of contemporary society.

In 2006 Ian McEwan was accused of plagiarizing sections of his 2001 novel Atonement from Lucille Andrews’ memoir No Time for Romance. This article explores how McEwan develops defenses against this charge in two later works of fiction Solar (2010) and My Purple Scented Novel (2016). Relying on his readers’ recognition of the intertextual nature of these texts McEwan metafictionally indicates that his literary refashioning of aspects of Andrews’ factual memoir absolves him of the charge of plagiarism. In so doing he also invites his readers to compare his putative plagiarism with the admitted literary transgressions of Jacob Epstein and Martin Amis. Assessing these defenses leads both to a discussion of the literary value of historical accuracy and to recognition of the roles that privelege and power play in discussions of plagiarism, whether literary or academic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review essay discusses two books on the study of music and meaning in everyday life. The first book, "Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry," explores the evolution of electronic dance music from an underground subculture to a mainstream industry. The second book, "Music in the Course of Life," examines the significance of music for individuals throughout their lives. Both books provide ethnographic insights into the social processes and cultural contexts surrounding music. The review highlights the different objectives, organization, and presentation styles of the two books, categorizing one as more analytic and the other as more evocative. It also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each book's approach and provides examples of the comparative insights they offer. However, the review notes that the analysis in the first book may overlook certain concepts and lacks depth in exploring them. Additionally, the review suggests that the first book portrays the changes in the electronic dance music scene and culture as negative, emphasizing tensions between older subcultural participants and younger, more conventional audiences. The review also points out that the first book's focus on authenticity may overlook the experiences of diverse ethnic and sexual identities within the scene. The text discusses a book called "Music and the Life Course" by Joseph A. Kotarba, which explores the relationship between music and selfhood. The book takes an existential sociology approach and examines how music impacts people's lives at different stages, from childhood to old age. However, the reviewer notes that the book focuses primarily on [Extracted from the article]

The current work proposes a reading of Manuel Payno’s Los bandidos de Río Frío (1888-1891), a foundational novel of nineteenth century Mexican literature. The proposed reading centers on the links between Payno’s novel and nineteenth century material cultural, with a particular focus on material objects that appear in Los bandidos de Río Frío. By tracing a parallelism between Payno’s passion for collecting and Universal Exhibitions, the essay analyses the novel-as well as the objects narrated and described in it-considering Payno’s memoirs about several European exhibitions visited by the author, and the role played by such visits in the configuration of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short review explores the physics journey of Professor Amit Dutta, illuminating his collaborative contributions with students and peers. We mainly focus on standard approaches to understanding non-equilibrium quantum dynamics and ground-state criticality using quantum informatic measures like ground-state fidelity, the Loschmidt echo and/or the decoherence factor. Using Floquet theory as a tool, we also discuss the dynamics of hard-core bosonic chain, shedding light on the phenomenon of dynamical localization and different analytically approachable limits of Floquet theory. The review further extends to probe the physics of topological phase transitions in driven/quenched systems, where we mainly focus on the non-equilibrium response of topological systems and topological state preparation. Finally, we also discuss late-time quantum dynamics leading to the thermalization of open and closed systems, where we review contemporary approaches to the applicability of thermodynamic principles in microscopic quantum systems and the macroscopic emergence of statistical mechanics in driven/quenched ergodic systems. Throughout this memoir, Professor Amit Dutta's important scientific contributions are mentioned for their impact on advancing our understanding of quantum dynamics and statistical mechanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early Soviet society featured clear nutrition guidelines and a robust plan for streamlined logistics in food processing, distribution, and consumption, all of which was aimed at building a stronger state through a virtuous transformation of calories into labor power. Such rhetoric appeared even in children's illustrated books, such as Vladimir Maiakovskii and Nikolai Kupreianov's Story of Petia, Fat Boy, and of Sima, Who is Skinny (1926). This paper shows how in the 1920s authors such as Viktor Shklovskii and Iurii Olesha turned that rhetoric on its head and pushed back against the early Soviet obsession with planning and mastering nature and the human body by employing metaphors of food, digestion, and agriculture. In Shklovskii's memoirs A Sentimental Journey (1923) and Knight's Move (1923) and Olesha's novel Envy (1927), the October Revolution itself emerges as a metabolic process on a vast scale: prerevolutionary aesthetic threads, motifs, and concepts are broken down and processed, reassembled, and repurposed into a seemingly new society and worldview, in which the individual original components are still recognizable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the information potential of memoirs by and about women who participated in the national liberation struggle of 1917-1921, published in Western Ukrainian magazines in the 1920-30s. The sources for the study were Litopys Chervonoi Kalyny magazine, as well as Chervona Kalyna Calendar-Almanac and Dnipro Calendar-Almanac annual periodicals. It is noted that the published works are represented by lengthy memoirs, brief mini-memoirs, and fictionalized memoirs. They preserve the names of the women who recalled and were recalled, reflect a woman’s view of the events of the Ukrainian Revolution in different cities and regions, the status of school education, the actions of military units, rebel groups, the activities of famous personalities, and the fate of ordinary people. Of particular value is the emotional component of women’s memoirs, which, together with attention to human relations, adds sharpness to the authors’ evaluative judgments. Women’s memoirs substantially complement the memoirs of the military, focusing on the preservation of memories of the heroic deeds of sisters of mercy, doctors, soldiers, underground women, and peasant women who helped the Ukrainian army. It is emphasized that in addition to factual material presenting the history of the revolution, the fate of women during the revolution, the transformation of gender relations, which was manifested in the willingness of women to take on men’s responsibilities, women’s memoirs are also an important source for the study of women’s self-reflection, women’s awareness of their place in the world and, specifically, their role in the national liberation struggle. The analyzed memoirs are also a source of information on the history of Western Ukrainian society in the interwar period, its civic activism, in particular through the periodicals, and the involvement of women in this activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tropelías: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada is the property of Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article is a personal memoir of Salvador Bacarisse, a Spanish scholar and academic. Born in Madrid in 1923, Bacarisse and his family fled to France during the Spanish Civil War. After serving in the Spanish army, he moved to London and eventually became a lecturer at the University of St Andrews. Bacarisse made significant contributions to the field of Hispanic Studies, particularly in the areas of stylistics, ideologies, and Latin American literature. He was also involved in the publication of the journal Forum for Modern Language Studies. Bacarisse passed away in 2024, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual curiosity and dedication to his field. [Extracted from the article]

Which experiences, practices, and memories of a contemporary Argentinian publisher become part of their memoirs? How do publishers define their own trajectories? This article analyzes a relatively recent phenomenon in the field of publishing: the multiplication of books by publishers based on their own work, which is a key source for researchers of the publishing world. The present study focuses on the case of Un camino con los libros by Leandro de Sagastizábal (2023), memoirs with stories from 45 years of a career. This analysis defines two main dimensions: the ways in which the narrative is structured, and the aspects of the trajectory and of publishing that are highlighted. This article describes the style of the text; next, after identifying the periodization of the career, defines structuring facets of the publishing work: a) publisher-book promoter; b) publisher-professor/researcher; c) publisher-author; d) publisher-publisher; and e) publisher-adviser-public official. This analysis leads to theoretical reflections that remain to be explored on the ways memories become biographic devices of self-reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the four books of memoirs by Esther Tusquets: Confesiones de una editora poco mentirosa (2005), Habíamos ganado la guerra (2007), Confesiones de una vieja dama indigna (2009), and Tiempos que fueron (2012). The initial premise of this research posits that, in recounting her personal experience, the author not only reveals intimate aspects of herself but also constructs a cultural narrative. To unravel the complexity inherent in this duality, three areas fundamental to autobiographical writing are explored: the configuration of identity through the narrative dimension of the text, the fictionality intrinsic to the genre, and the underlying testimonial intention of the author. The analysis shows that, although Tusquets writes these memoirs from a deeply subjective perspective, by contextualising them within a range of geographical, social, cultural, and political circumstances, she produces a dual cultural narative. Thus in the course of documenting the construction of Lumen’s catalogue through a series of definitive milestones, she also furnishes a valuable testimony to what the publishing field in Spain was like between the late Franco era and the 1990s when the great international conglomerates began to erect insurmountable barriers to the work of independent publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henri Deslandres initiated imaging spectroscopy of the solar atmosphere in 1892 at Paris Observatory. He developed two kinds of spectrographs: the 'spectrohéliographe des formes', i.e. the monochromatic instrument to reveal chromospheric structures (such as filaments, prominences, plages and active regions); and the 'spectrohéliographe des vitesses', i.e. the spectroheliograph to record line profiles of cross-sections of the Sun, in order to measure the Doppler shifts of dynamic features. Deslandres moved to Meudon and hired Lucien d'Azambuja in 1899; together they built the large quadruple spectroheliograph. CaII K systematic observations of the full Sun started in 1908 and were followed in 1909 by Hα with two dedicated 3-metre spectroheliographs. Daily observations were organized by d'Azambuja who also intensively used the large 7-metre spectroheliograph for his research and thesis (1930). This paper summarizes fifty years of investigations by Mr and Mrs d'Azambuja, who explored various photospheric and chromospheric lines, obtaining special spectroheliograms with the high dispersion 7-metre instrument. They also intensively observed filaments and prominences, reported results in an extensive memoir (1948) and recorded rare solar activity events with the two 3-metre spectroheliographs, until their retirement in 1959. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens if international interveners feel emotions that they consider unsanctioned, unwanted and unprofessional? What if they enact and manage their emotions in ways that they – or others – deem unacceptable? If international interveners face anxiety about being 'too emotional' or not feeling or expressing the 'right' emotions, does this challenge their sense of identity? And what consequences could this have for peacebuilding and the conflict-affected population in which they were working? Building on the growing body of critical peace and conflict scholarship that has analysed international interveners at the micro-scale, this article analyses how individual interveners' emotional and embodied experiences influence their understanding and practice of peacebuilding. Based on a discourse analysis of the memoirs of 10 international interveners, this article identifies two primary interpretive repertoires that the interveners employed and argues that they generated two ideal-type subject positions: the intervener as objective, rational, technocratic 'expert' and the intervener as irrational, fallible, vulnerable 'human'. These subject positions determined the feeling rules that the interveners followed and the dilemmas they faced. This, in turn, affected how the interveners perceived the conflict-affected societies in which they were working, and how they understood and practised peacebuilding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patrick Chamoiseau's inter-generational fascination with the writing of Saint-John Perse (SJP) is sustained, intense, sentient, and highly generative. The focus on SJP amplifies the connective timbre of Chamoiseau's own writing, confirming the relation to the "pays natal" and to the "tout-monde" as central to both writers' poetics. Five moves constitute the high points of this particular realization of a Glissantian "poetics of Relation": the SJP intertext in Chamoiseau's childhood memoirs and fiction; the two-hander construction of SJP's poetic persona in Lettres créoles (1991); the sentimenthèque disseminated across Écrire en pays dominé (1997); and, most crucially, the "Méditations à Saint-John Perse", an oral presentation from 1995 which was eventually integrated into Chamoiseau's 2013 book-length account of his "Magnetic Liaisons" with Césaire, Saint-John Perse and Glissant. The Méditations articulate a critique of criticism in favor of a demiurgic poetics of self-reflexive magnification and esteem even as they perform a dance of ethno-social and intergenerational convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reads Maryse Condé's 1999récit d'enfance, Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer, as a "generational text"; a text that is both about the unresolved and ambivalent feelings aroused by writing about the dead mother, and also about this loss as the site and source of (literary) generation. Le Cœur defiantly rewrites the classic narrative of Antillean matrifocality, and yet, although the mother's death is relegated to a single line, maternal loss suffuses the entire narrative. Moreover, the text is a reflection on language, writing and literature more generally, and can be read as an exploration of the painful transition from preoedipal to symbolic. Words in this text are destructive entities that wound and distort all relationships, but especially the relationship with the mother, igniting a sustained yearning to return to the security of the prelinguistic pre-oedipal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers" is a candid and humorous memoir written by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green. It delves into Rodgers' life as the daughter of renowned composer Richard Rodgers and her own journey as a composer and lyricist. The memoir explores her complex relationship with her parents, the challenges she faced as a woman in the music industry, and her personal doubts and setbacks. With its engaging and insightful content, the memoir offers valuable perspectives on the experiences of women in the music industry during the mid-20th century. [Extracted from the article]

This article is a book review of two works about the German Nobel laureate Günter Grass. The first book, "Günter Grass: Der Schriftsteller" by Dieter Stolz, is a comprehensive introduction to Grass's poetry, dramas, and prose fiction. The reviewer notes that Stolz's personal connection to Grass influences his perspective, but praises his deep knowledge of Grass's works. The second book, "Katalogisierung und Kommentierung der Jugendlektüren von Günter Grass in den 1930er und frühen 1940er Jahren" by Dorothee Neuhaus and Volker Neuhaus, focuses on Grass's early life and the books that influenced his literary output. The reviewer highlights the book's insightful interpretations and its value for researchers. [Extracted from the article]

This article focuses on memoirs by three Australian journalists, each of whom was born to European parents from a non-native-English-speaking background: Elisabeth Wynhausen's Manly Girls (1989), Tom Dusevic's Whole Wild World (2016) and James Jeffrey's My Family and Other Animus (2018). I also discuss Jeffrey's Paprika Paradise (2007), an earlier memoir of travelling in his mother's homeland of Hungary with his northern English father. The article explores the extent to which these memoirs are examples of transcultural life writing, attuned to questions of language and culture. I argue that at least two of the texts are, while one is more equivocal on these questions. All three authors take care to translate their non-native-English-speaking family members' cultural and political attitudes into an idiom that makes sense to a contemporary Anglophone Australian readership. At the same time, they often read familiar "Anglo" cultural norms critically, through a transcultural lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, Behrouz Boochani's testimonial memoir No Friend but the Mountains confronted Australian readers with their complicity in the nation's carceral border-industrial complex. In the five years since its publication, it has been translated and sold into eighteen languages in twenty-three countries and adapted for film, theatre and a song cycle. This article uses a book-historical approach to present a short biography of No Friend, analysing how it has evolved as a noteworthy work that has taken on distinct lives in the nation and beyond. It analyses two significant moments of recognition in the biography of this book: the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and the special issue of the life writing journal Biography. The life of this book—its production, reception and material form—suggests the potential for allegiances between cultural and literary elites in the reception of life narratives by forcibly displaced people. These allegiances mark the early versions of No Friend and have been central to its extensive mobility to new readerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]