Download or read book The Seductions of Biography written by David Suchoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Seductions of Biography is an important volume which sheds new light on a flourishing literary form, the biography. In postmodern culture, new methods and intentions emerge, as well as new obstacles, towards our understanding of biography as a genre. This book provides a thorough exploration of this genre, from a wide range of postmodern perspectives. The Seductions of Biography brings together a number of essays which reflect in culturally critical as well as autobiographical terms on current themes and practices of contemporary biography. Issues addressed by these essays focus on the postmodern dilemma itself--as new voices from excluded communities make themselves heard in biographical works, the decentralization of new issues, such as gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, becomes problematic. Contributors question the responsibilities a biographer has, both to the subject and the public, and consider also questions of morality and taste; for example, is it fair to use private tapings made by your subject's analyst? And how much do we really need to know about Eleanor Roosevelt's sex life? The impact of sexuality on our reading of public figures is addressed, as well as other issues which explore the popular and provocative nature of biography. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in scope, The Seductions of Biography will appeal to biographers, historians, cultural critics, and the vast population of avid biography readers. Contributors: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Clark Blaise, Marilyn L. Brownstein, Blanche Wiesen Cook, John D'Emilio, Jeffrey Louis Decker, Michael Eric Dyson, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Hayden Herrera, Maurice Isserman, Barbara Johnson, William S. McFeely, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Richard J. Powell, Phyllis Rose, Doris Sommer, Marita Sturken, Sherley Anne Williams, Jean Fagan Yellin

Download or read book The Seductions of Biography written by David Suchoff and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book The Seductions of Biography written by David Suchoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Seductions of Biography is an important volume which sheds new light on a flourishing literary form, the biography. In postmodern culture, new methods and intentions emerge, as well as new obstacles, towards our understanding of biography as a genre. This book provides a thorough exploration of this genre, from a wide range of postmodern perspectives. The Seductions of Biography brings together a number of essays which reflect in culturally critical as well as autobiographical terms on current themes and practices of contemporary biography. Issues addressed by these essays focus on the postmodern dilemma itself--as new voices from excluded communities make themselves heard in biographical works, the decentralization of new issues, such as gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, becomes problematic. Contributors question the responsibilities a biographer has, both to the subject and the public, and consider also questions of morality and taste; for example, is it fair to use private tapings made by your subject's analyst? And how much do we really need to know about Eleanor Roosevelt's sex life? The impact of sexuality on our reading of public figures is addressed, as well as other issues which explore the popular and provocative nature of biography. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in scope, The Seductions of Biography will appeal to biographers, historians, cultural critics, and the vast population of avid biography readers. Contributors: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Clark Blaise, Marilyn L. Brownstein, Blanche Wiesen Cook, John D'Emilio, Jeffrey Louis Decker, Michael Eric Dyson, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Hayden Herrera, Maurice Isserman, Barbara Johnson, William S. McFeely, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Richard J. Powell, Phyllis Rose, Doris Sommer, Marita Sturken, Sherley Anne Williams, Jean Fagan Yellin

Download or read book The Art Of Seduction written by Robert Greene and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-09-03 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.

Download or read book Biography written by Catherine N. Parke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine Parke explores biography through detailed examinations of Samuel Johnson, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein and other masters of the genre.

Download or read book Seduction written by Clement Knox and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliantly original history that explores the shifting cultural mores of courtship, told through the lives of remarkable women and men throughout history. If sex has generally been a private matter, seduction has always been of intense public interest. Whether the stuff of front-page tabloid news, the scandal of nineteenth-century American courts, or the stuff of literature across the eras, we are fascinated by stories of seduction and sex. In the first history of its kind, Clement Knox explores seduction in all its historical and cultural incarnations. Moving from the Garden of Eden to the carnivals of eighteenth-century Venice, and from the bawdy world of Georgian London to the saloons and speakeasies of the Jazz Age, this is an exploration of timeless themes of power, desire, and free will. Along the way we meet Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter Mary Shelley, and her friend Caroline Norton, and reckon with their fight for women’s rights and freedoms. We encounter Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, who became entangled in America's labyrinthine and racialized seduction laws. We discover how tall tales of predatory vampires, hypnotists, and immigrants were mobilized by Nazis and nativists to help propel them to power. We consider how after seduction seemingly vanished from view during the Sexual Revolution, it exploded back into our lives as The Game became a multi-million bestseller, online dating swept the world, and the ongoing male fascinating with manipulating women was exposed. In a big-thinking cultural history told through an extraordinary range of stories and sources, Knox explores how our ideas about desire and pursuit have developed in step with the modern world. This is a bold, modern charter of seduction, from the birth of the Enlightenment to the explosion of romantic literature and right up to our contemporary moments of reckoning around “incel” culture and #MeToo.

Download or read book The Seductions of Darwin written by Matthew Rampley and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surge of evolutionary and neurological analyses of art and its effects raises questions of how art, culture, and the biological sciences influence one another, and what we gain in applying scientific methods to the interpretation of artwork. In this insightful book, Matthew Rampley addresses these questions by exploring key areas where Darwinism, neuroscience, and art history intersect. Taking a scientific approach to understanding art has led to novel and provocative ideas about its origins, the basis of aesthetic experience, and the nature of research into art and the humanities. Rampley’s inquiry examines models of artistic development, the theories and development of aesthetic response, and ideas about brain processes underlying creative work. He considers the validity of the arguments put forward by advocates of evolutionary and neuroscientific analysis, as well as its value as a way of understanding art and culture. With the goal of bridging the divide between science and culture, Rampley advocates for wider recognition of the human motivations that drive inquiry of all types, and he argues that our engagement with art can never be encapsulated in a single notion of scientific knowledge. Engaging and compelling, The Seductions of Darwin is a rewarding look at the identity and development of art history and its complicated ties to the world of scientific thought.

Download or read book Teaching Lives Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narratives written by Laurie McNeill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contemporary ‘boom’ in the publication and consumption of auto/biographical representation has made life narratives a popular and compelling subject for twenty-first century classrooms. The proliferation of forms, media, terminologies, and disciplinary approaches in a range of educational contexts invites discussion of how and why we teach these materials. Drawing on their experiences in disciplines including creative writing, language studies, education, literary studies, linguistics, and psychology, contributors to this volume explore some of the central issues that inspire, enable, and complicate the teaching of life writing subjects and texts, examining the ideologies, issues, methods, and practices that underpin contemporary pedagogies of auto/biography. The collection acknowledges the potential perils that life writing texts and subjects represent for instructors, with a series of short essays by leading auto/biography scholars who reflect on their failed experiences teaching life narratives, and share strategies for negotiating the particular challenges these texts can present. Exploring issues including teaching across genres, analyzing writing about trauma, decolonizing pedagogies, and challenging assumptions (our own, our students’, and our colleagues’), Teaching Lives illuminates what makes the teaching of life narratives different from teaching other kinds of subjects or texts, and why auto/biography has such a critical role to play in contemporary education. This book was originally published as a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

Download or read book Biography written by Nigel Hamilton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thousands of years we have recorded real lives--the lives of others, and of ourselves. For what purpose and for whom has this universal and timeless pursuit endured? What obstacles have lain in the path of biographers in the past, and what continues to confound biographers today? Above all, how is it that biographies and autobiographies play such a contested, popular role in contemporary Western culture, from biopics to blogs, from memoir to docudrama? Award-winning biographer and teacher Nigel Hamilton addresses these questions in an incisive and vivid narrative that will appeal to students of human nature and self-representation across the arts and sciences. Tracing the remarkable and often ignored historical evolution of biography from the ancient world to the present, this brief and fascinating tour of the genre conveys the passionate quest to capture the lives of individuals and the many difficulties it has entailed through the centuries. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to American Splendor, from cuneiform to the Internet, from commemoration to deconstruction, from fiction to fact--by way of famous biographical artists such as Plutarch, Saint Augustine, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, Sigmund Freud, Lytton Strachey, Abel Gance, Virginia Woolf, Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Julian Barnes, Ted Hughes, Frank McCourt, and many others--Nigel Hamilton's Biography: A Brief History will change the way you think about biography and real lives.

Download or read book Biography A Very Short Introduction written by Hermione Lee and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biography is one of the most popular, best-selling, and widely-read of literary genres. But why do certain people and historical events arouse so much interest? How can biographies be compared with history and works of fiction? Does a biography need to be true? Is it acceptable to omit or conceal things? Does the biographer need to personally know the subject? Must a biographer be subjective? In this Very Short Introduction Hermione Lee considers the cultural and historical background of different types of biographies, looking at the factors that affect biographers and whether there are different strategies, ethics, and principles required for writing about one person compared to another. She also considers contemporary biographical publications and considers what kind of 'lives' are the most popular and in demand. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Download or read book The Biographical Turn written by Hans Renders and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Writing Biography written by Lloyd E. Ambrosius and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historian as biographer must resolve questions that reflect the dual challenge of telling history and telling lives: How does the biographer sort out the individual?s role within the larger historical context? How do biographical studies relate to other forms of history? Should historians use different approaches to biography, depending on the cultures of their subjects? What are the appropriate primary sources and techniques that scholars should use in writing biographies in their respective fields? In Writing Biography, six prominent historians address these issues and reflect on their varied experiences and divergent perspectives as biographers. Shirley A. Leckie examines the psychological and personal connections between biographer and subject; R. Keith Schoppa considers the pervasive effect of culture on the recognition of individuality and the presentation of a life; Retha M. Warnicke explores past context and modern cultural biases in writing the biographies of Tudor women; John Milton Cooper Jr. discusses the challenges of writing modern biographies and the interplay of the biographer?s own experiences; Nell Irvin Painter looks at the process of reconstructing a life when written documents are scant; and Robert J. Richards investigates the intimate relationship between life experiences and new ideas. Despite their broad range of perspectives, all six scholars agree on two central points: biography and historical analysis are inextricably linked, and biographical studies offer an important tool for analyzing historical questions.

Download or read book In Collaboration with British Literary Biography written by Jane McVeigh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-13 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about one person’s reading and what has been learnt about how the lives of other people, particularly authors, have been written in British literary biographies over the last fifty years. It is less interested in what happened in the lives of the people described in these biographies, and more concerned with how these stories have been told. It aims to have a conversation with British biographers, particularly Michael Holroyd, Richard Holmes, Hermione Lee and Claire Tomalin, to make their voices heard, to set them talking. It understands biography as an ongoing collaboration, not only between biographers and their subjects, but between biographers and their readers. This is also a study of haunting, in which we haunt the lives of others to help us come to a better understanding of our own.

Download or read book The Known Citizen written by Sarah E. Igo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Book of the Year Winner of the Merle Curti Award Winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “A masterful study of privacy.” —Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books “Masterful (and timely)...[A] marathon trek from Victorian propriety to social media exhibitionism...Utterly original.” —Washington Post Every day, we make decisions about what to share and when, how much to expose and to whom. Securing the boundary between one’s private affairs and public identity has become an urgent task of modern life. How did privacy come to loom so large in public consciousness? Sarah Igo tracks the quest for privacy from the invention of the telegraph onward, revealing enduring debates over how Americans would—and should—be known. The Known Citizen is a penetrating historical investigation with powerful lessons for our own times, when corporations, government agencies, and data miners are tracking our every move. “A mighty effort to tell the story of modern America as a story of anxieties about privacy...Shows us that although we may feel that the threat to privacy today is unprecedented, every generation has felt that way since the introduction of the postcard.” —Louis Menand, New Yorker “Engaging and wide-ranging...Igo’s analysis of state surveillance from the New Deal through Watergate is remarkably thorough and insightful.” —The Nation

Download or read book How To Do Biography written by Nigel Hamilton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-22 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is not surprising that biography is one of the most popular literary genres of our day. What is remarkable is that there is no accessible guide for how to write one. Now, following his recent Biography: A Brief History (from Harvard), award-winning biographer and teacher Nigel Hamilton tackles the practicalities of doing biography in this first succinct primer to elucidate the tools of the biographerÕs craft. Hamilton invites the reader to join him on a fascinating journey through the art of biographical composition. Starting with personal motivation, he charts the making of a modern biography from the inside: from conception to fulfillment. He emphasizes the need to know oneÕs audience, rehearses the excitement and perils of modern research, delves into the secrets of good and great biography, and guides the reader through the essential components of life narrative. With examples taken from the finest modern biographies, Hamilton shows how to portray the ages of manÑbirth, childhood, love, lifeÕs work, the evening of life, and death. In addition, he suggests effective ways to start and close a life story. He clarifies the difference between autobiography and memoirÑand addresses the sometimes awkward ethical, legal, and personal consequences of truth-telling in modern life writing. He concludes with the publication and reception of biographyÑits afterlife, so to speak. Written with humor, insight, and compassion, How To Do Biography is the manual that would-be biographers have long been awaiting.

Download or read book Writing Feminist Lives written by Malin Lidström Brock and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-05 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws attention to the controversy that surrounds Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Simone de Beauvoir’s lives and the important role that their life stories have played in their feminist writing. Directly and indirectly, the four women have contributed to battles over feminism’s meaning through autobiographically informed political writing. Inevitably, therefore, their biographers are also participants in these battles, yet not always on the same side as their subjects. Writing Feminist Lives introduces a further fold of nuance into considerations of biography and feminism by showing that the biographers of the four women have made methodological choices that reflect their loyalty to, or their scepticism towards, competing ideological definitions of the exemplary feminist life.

Download or read book The Biographer and the Subject written by Rana Tekcan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A good biography is a well-staged illusion. It creates -- on paper -- a vivid, rounded, and immediate sense of lived life. In contrast to purely fictional forms, biography writing does not allow total freedom to the biographer in the creative act. Ideally, a biography's backbone is formed by accurate historical facts. But its soul lies elsewhere. Since the concern is life, something more is needed: Nothing dry, cold or dead, but a vibrant impression of life that is left in the air after one turns over the last page. But how does a biographer do it? The way a biographer creates a subject is largely dictated by the historical distance between them. There are three types of distance in biographical writing: First, where the biographer and the subject personally know one another; second, where the biographer is a near contemporary of the subject; and third, where biographer and subject are distinctly separated, in some cases by hundreds of years. Tekcan explores how some of the most accomplished biographers manage to "recreate life" across time and space. She closely examines Samuel Johnson's "Life of Mr. Richard Savage", James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson", Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians", Michael Holroyd's "Lytton Strachey", Park Honan's "Jane Austen", and Andrew Motion's "Keats".