Feminism & Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods

by Lury; Celia

• ISBN13: 9780415232012
• ISBN10: 0415232015
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book features essays by leading feminist scholars from a variety of disciplines on the latest developments in autobiographical studies. The collection is structured around the inter-linked concepts of genre, inter-subjectivity, and memory. Whilst exemplifying the very different levels of autobiographical activity going on in feminist studies, the contributions chart a movement from autobiography as genre to autobiography as cultural practice, and from the analysis of autobiographical texts to a preoccupation with autobiography as method.

Table of Contents

List of figures	ix
List of contributors	xi
Preface: autobiography, the social self and ghosts	xv
Acknowledgements	xvii
Introduction	1	(22)
PART I Genre	23	(66)
Enforced narratives: stories of another self	25	(15)
Carolyn Steedman
From `self-made women' to `women's made-selves'? Audit selves, simulation and surveillance in the rise of public woman	40	(21)
Liz Stanley
Textualisation of the self and gender identity in the life-story	61	(15)
Marie-Francoise Chanfrault-Duchet
Extending autobiography: a discussion of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar	76	(13)
Mary Evans
PART II Intersubjectivity	89	(78)
Dis/composing the subject: intersubjectivities in oral history	91	(16)
Penny Summerfield
Spellbound: audience, identity and self in black women's narrative discourse	107	(21)
Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis
Our mother's daughters: autobiographical inheritance through stories of gender and class	128	(13)
Sara Scott
Sue Scott
Matrilineal narratives revisited	141	(13)
Tess Cosslett
The global self: narratives of Caribbean migrant women	154	(13)
Mary Chamberlain
PART III Memory	167	(72)
Subjects-in-time: slavery and African-American women's autobiographies	169	(14)
Alison Easton
Memory frames: the role of concepts and cognition in telling life-stories	183	(18)
Magda Michielsens
Autobiographical times	201	(19)
Susannah Radstone
Circa 1959	220	(19)
Nancy K. Miller
PART IV Autobiography matters	239	(18)
Auto/biography and the actual course of things	241	(6)
Trev Broughton
Doing Sym/Bio/Graphy with Yasna	247	(5)
Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes
Bringing it home: autobiography and contradiction	252	(5)
Ruth McElroy
Index	257