Download or read book The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life written by William Lowell Randall and published by Explorations in Narrative Psyc. This book was released on 2015 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William L. Randall shows how narrative psychology is integral to how we navigate everyday life. He makes the case that all people function as narrative psychologists by continually storying their lives - as well as those of others - in memory and imagination. The book weaves anecdotes of encounters its author experiences with speculations on his own life story, probing the narrative complexity of our memories, emotions, and identities, and our experience of everything from romance to rumour and history to religion.

Download or read book The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life written by William L. Randall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-20 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our everyday lives are enmeshed in storytelling: the stories we tell about our memories, the people we know, and the world we inhabit; those we tell about our families and communities; and the narratives we encounter in books, movies, and television. Narrative structures how we view ourselves and everything around us. In The Narrative Complexity of Ordinary Life, William L. Randall shows how concepts central to the study of narrative psychology--such as narrative development and the interrelation between narrative and identity, cognition, and development--are integral to everyday life. He makes the case that all people function as narrative psychologists by continually storying their lives in memory and imagination, as well as speculating on the stories that others may be living, a process that Randall refers to as storyotyping. Relying heavily on narrative, Randall draws from experiences in his own life to illustrate various concepts in narrative psychology. Randall's inquiry also takes him to the topics of gossip, rumor, and the narrative complexity of nostalgia. He contemplates the storied nature of the news, and by extension, history. Randall discusses the nature of spirituality and religion as "master narratives." He also draws upon the work of Dan McAdams to discuss how the stories people internalize and tell to others reveal a great deal about the way in which they interpret and experience the world around them, ultimately arguing that the recurring themes in people's lives shape their personalities.

Download or read book Narrative Complexity written by Marina Grishakova and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The variety in contemporary philosophical and aesthetic thinking as well as in scientific and experimental research on complexity has not yet been fully adopted by narratology. By integrating cutting-edge approaches, this volume takes a step toward filling this gap and establishing interdisciplinary narrative research on complexity. Narrative Complexity provides a framework for a more complex and nuanced study of narrative and explores the experience of narrative complexity in terms of cognitive processing, affect, and mind and body engagement. Bringing together leading international scholars from a range of disciplines, this volume combines analytical effort and conceptual insight in order to relate more effectively our theories of narrative representation and complexities of intelligent behavior. This collection engages important questions on how narrative complexity functions as an agent of cultural evolution, how our understanding of narrative complexity can be extended in light of new research in the social sciences and humanities, how interactive media produce new types of narrative complexity, and how the role of embodiment as a factor of narrative complexity acquires prominence in cognitive science and media studies. The contributors explore narrative complexity transmitted through various semiotic channels, embedded in multiple contexts, and experienced across different media, including film, comics, music, interactive apps, audiowalks, and ambient literature.

Download or read book The Many Facets of Storytelling Global Reflections on Narrative Complexity written by Melanie Rohse and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. The Many Facets of Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative Complexity explores a range of issues around narratives and their uses in various contexts and aspects of life. The premise for this volume is that human beings are storytelling creatures and stories or narratives are part of our daily lives and have been for centuries. From this starting point, the authors in this volume offer their explorations, reflections and findings from research and practice across disciplines and continents. Certain functions of stories are uncovered - education, social change and identity formation, for example. Some specific uses of narratives are investigated, such as in research methodology and representations in the media. Finally, other narratives are offered for themselves, as performances and (auto)biographical reflections. The chapters in this volume illustrate the many meanings of storytelling, and thus account for the layers of complexity that are inevitable when we discuss narratives.

Download or read book Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life written by Molly Andrews and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at how stories & imagination come together in our daily lives, influencing not only our thoughts about what we see and do, but also our contemplation of what is possible and what our limitations are.

Download or read book The Difference written by Marina Endicott and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new novel by the award-winning author of Good to a Fault and The Little Shadows, about two sisters who live aboard a merchant ship on a fateful voyage through the South Pacific. "Up from underneath comes a blue-black swell, a whale rising in a long arc. Kay waits, hovering in the difference between herself and the creature." What is the difference between ourselves and other humans? Between human and animal? Where does that difference persist in our minds? These are the questions Marina Endicott, one of our most beloved storytellers, explores in this sweeping, intoxicating novel set on the Morning Light, a ship from Nova Scotia sailing the South Pacific in 1912. Thea and Kay are half-sisters, separated in age by more than a decade. After the death of their stern father, head of a residential school in western Canada, the elder sister, Thea, returns east for her long-awaited marriage to the captain of the ship. She cannot abandon her younger sister, so Kay joins her, and together they embark on a life-changing voyage around the world. At the heart of The Difference is one crystallizing moment in Micronesia: Thea forms a bond with a young boy from one of the islands, and takes him as her own. The repercussions of this act reverberate through the novel--forcing Kay to examine her own assumptions about what is forgivable, and what is right. Taking inspiration from the true story of a small boy who was brought on board a Canadian sailing ship in the South Seas, Marina Endicott shows us a vanished world in all its wildness and wonder, and its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty too. She also brilliantly illuminates our own times through Kay's preoccupation with the idea of "difference"--between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs, and species. A breathtaking tour-de-force by one of our most celebrated authors, a writer with the astonishing ability to bring a past world to vivid life while revealing the moral complexity of our own.

Download or read book Painting Out of the Ordinary written by David H. Solkin and published by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies. This book was released on 2008 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its plethora of illustrations, many of works published here for the first time, 'Painting Out of the Ordinary' will be compulsory reading for anyone interested in British art and society of the Romantic era.

Download or read book The Perfect Swarm written by Len Fisher and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The IgNobel Prize-winner and author of Rock, Paper, Scissors applies science-based solutions to seemingly complex problems in life.

Download or read book My Extraordinary Ordinary Life written by Sissy Spacek and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her delightful and moving memoir, Sissy Spacek writes about her idyllic, barefoot childhood in a small East Texas town, with the clarity and wisdom that comes from never losing sight of her roots. Descended from industrious Czech immigrants and threadbare southern gentility, she grew up a tomboy, tagging along with two older brothers and absorbing grace and grit from her remarkable parents, who taught her that she could do anything. She also learned fearlessness in the wake of a family tragedy, the grief propelling her "like rocket fuel" to follow her dreams of becoming a performer. With a keen sense of humor and a big-hearted voice, she describes how she arrived in New York City one star-struck summer as a seventeen-year-old carrying a suitcase and two guitars; and how she built a career that has spanned four decades with films such as Carrie, Coal Miner's Daughter, 3 Women, and The Help. She details working with some of the great directors of our time, including Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Brian De Palma-who thought of her as a no-talent set decorator until he cast her as the lead in Carrie. She also reveals why, at the height of her fame, she and her family moved away from Los Angeles to a farm in rural Virginia. Whether she's describing the terrors and joys of raising two talented, independent daughters, taking readers behind the scenes on Oscar night, or meditating on the thrill of watching a pair of otters frolicking in her pond, Sissy Spacek's memoir is poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, plainspoken and utterly honest. My Extraordinary Ordinary Life is about what matters most: the exquisite worth of ordinary things, the simple pleasures of home and family, and the honest job of being right with the world. "If I get hit by a truck tomorrow," she writes, "I want to know I've returned my neighbor's cake pan."

Download or read book Ordinary Life written by Elizabeth Berg and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 2002 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this superb collection of short stories, the bestselling author of Open House and Talk Before Sleep takes us into the times in women’s lives when memories and events cohere to create a sense of wholeness, understanding, and change. In Ordinary Life, Mavis McPherson locks herself in the bathroom for a week, and no, she isn’t contemplating getting a divorce—she just needs some time to think, to take stock of her life, and she comes to a surprising conclusion. In Today’s Special,a woman recognizes the solace she finds in the simple, timeless fare and atmosphere of the local diner and, ultimately, the harmony within her own spirit that familiar comforts can evoke. In White Dwarf, the secrets of a marriage are revealed as a couple passes the time with a seemingly insignificant word-association game. And in “Martin’s Letter to Nan,” the unforgettable husband and wife from Berg’s novel The Pull of the Moon engage in a new correspondence in which a different aspect of their marriage is revealed. Elizabeth Berg’s fiction has been praised for its "brilliant insights about the human condition" (Detroit Free Press), and The Charlotte Observer has said that "Berg captures the way women think as well as any writer."Those same qualities of wisdom and insight are everywhere present in Ordinary Life.

Download or read book Restorying Our Lives written by Gary M. Kenyon and published by Greenwood Publishing Group. This book was released on 1997 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A blend of practical insight and academic analysis concerning composing or "storying" our lives. With a bibliography on the narrative approach in the human sciences, and examples, this work should be a useful resource for anyone curious about the dynamics of continuity and change.

Download or read book Storying Later Life written by Gary Kenyon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its brief but vigorous history, gerontology has spawned a broadening range of specializations. One of the newest of such specializations is narrative gerontology, so named for its emphasis on the biographical, or inside, dimensions of the experience of aging. Telling stories about our world, our relationships, and ourselves is fundamental to how we make meaning. Everything from our history to our religion and our memories to our emotions is linked to the tales we tell ourselves, and others, about where we have come from and where we are going. They are central to who we are. The biographical side of human life is every bit as critical to fathom as the biological side, if we seek a more balanced, positive, and optimistic perspective on what aging is about; if we would honor the dignity and complexity, the humanity and uniqueness of the lives of older persons, no matter what their health or economic standing. In this respect, a narrative approach is particularly suited to the exploration of such topics as meaning, spirituality, and wisdom, and the connections they share. This volume reflects a selection of new directions and insights, and constitutes a general broadening and deepening of narrative gerontology, exploring its implications for theory and research in the field of aging, and for the quality of life of older adults themselves. Such deepening indicates a greater refinement of thought, method, and intervention. The evolution of narrative gerontology is also evidenced by a significant increase in the number of faculty and graduate students engaged in research in this area, as well as by increasing collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and administrators in applying narrative insights to contexts such as long term care - indeed, healthcare in general. These initiatives have given rise to the phrase, "narrative care as core care".

Download or read book Simply Complexity written by Neil Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new branch of science which will reveal how to avoid the rush hour, overcome cancer, and find the perfect date What do traffic jams, stock market crashes, and wars have in common? They are all explained using complexity, an unsolved puzzle that many researchers believe is the key to predicting - and ultimately solving - everything from terrorist attacks and pandemic viruses right down to rush hour traffic congestion. Complexity is considered by many to be the single most important scientific development since general relativity and promises to make sense of no less than the very heart of the Universe. Using it, scientists can find order emerging from seemingly random interactions of all kinds, from something as simple as flipping coins through to more challenging problems such as predicting shopping habits, the patterns in modern jazz, and the growth of cancer tumours.

Download or read book Deep Simplicity written by John Gribbin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Gribbin takes us through the basics with his customary talent for accessibility and clarity' Sunday Times The world around us can be a complex, confusing place. Earthquakes happen without warning, stock markets fluctuate, weather forecasters seldom seem to get it right - even other people continue to baffle us. How do we make sense of it all? In fact, John Gribbin reveals, our seemingly random universe is actually built on simple laws of cause and effect that can explain why, for example, just one vehicle braking can cause a traffic jam; why wild storms result from a slight atmospheric change; even how we evolved from the most basic materials. Like a zen painting, a fractal image or the pattern on a butterfly's wings, simple elements form the bedrock of a sophisticated whole. Synthesizing chaos and complexity theory for the perplexed, Deep Simplicity brilliantly illuminates the harmony underlying our existence.

Download or read book Extraordinary Ordinary People written by Condoleezza Rice and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the difference. Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman--and the first black woman ever--to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim, because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, Birmingham had become an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told--or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice’s neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza’s passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university’s second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news--just shortly before her father’s death--that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling.

Download or read book Why Fish Don t Exist written by Lulu Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

Download or read book Life and Narrative written by Brian Schiff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Life and Narrative examines the perennial mystery of how persons encounter, manage, and inhabit a self and a world of their own--and others'--creation and the ramifications of such creations. From literary and social science perspectives, this volume grapples with the process of how life and narrative interact"--