Auto Biography Research Articles

Literary Istanbul

Literary Istanbul Buket Uzuner (bio), Erkut Tokman (bio), and Matt A. Hanson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution A City of Two Continents by Buket Uzuner There are few cities in the world for which countless novels, monographs, poems, and memoirs have been written. Istanbul has always been one of those few cities that has changed human history with its multicultural self (entity) and geostrategical position. Istanbul is unique in being the only city in the world to be set on two continents with a sea passing through it by a natural strait. I chose Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City, as he paints the poetic images of the city through his personal memories and emotions in a brave and literary living autobiogra phy. He talks about the Istanbul of his childhood in the back streets and waterways as if he were a fairytale teller; Pamuk tells the tales of both Istanbulian writers Tanpınar and Yahya Kemal, as well as those who've lived in Istanbul like Flaubert, Nerval, Lord Byron, Amicis, and Cavafy with the sadness (hüzün) of a paradise lost. The reader immediately understands that Istanbul is both Pamuk's home and the heart of his imagination. [End Page 36] I've many favorite bookstores in Istanbul. As you know, Istanbul is set on two continents, therefore I chose two bookstores, one from each. Minoa bookstore (Şişli, on the European side) is an independent bookstore with a wide range of books both in English and Turkish. Its café has lovely cakes and good coffee. Penguen bookstore (Suadiye, on the Asian side) is a five-story bookstore offering different books on each floor along with a cozy café. The City as an Unwritten Novel by Erkut Tokman As it is located at the very end of Istiklal Street (La Grand Rue de Pera) in the Tünel (Tunnel) district of Beyoğlu-İstanbul and considered the third oldest bookshop of the city, whenever I pass by Cohen Sisters Bookshop, it has always been a passageway of memories for me. It is in an old, historical, shady passage with charming cafés facing the Galata-Tunnel Funicular Station—considered the second oldest funicular underground system (after London)—through which one can travel between the Beyoğlu and Karaköy districts climbing up to the hill. Immediately exiting the station, you face the huge and splendid iron door of the passage and last stop of the old tram. The bookshop's owners were two sisters, Sephardic Jews: Mazalto Kohen and Elisa Kohen Benzimra. They established it in the garden of the Swedish Consulate to sell books on nursing and fashion; later, however, when the bookshop moved to Narmanlı Han and eventually to the Tunnel Passage, they sold a wide range of old and new books from different genres and subjects as well as gravures. I have met the owner from the third generation of their family, their cousin's son, Albert Sapan, who inherited the bookshop recently from Samuel Sapan. Although the bookshop's tattered wood frames give the impression of negligence, it reflects the epitome of Istanbul's derelict soul of minorities. With few customers inside, especially today, the shop resists the modern new bookshops near the tram stop, as if it was left alone at the end of a passage smelling of old books. Two old, round tables with a pair of facing chairs are often empty whenever I am there. They face the stairs to the suspended floor of the bookshop that stores books in abundance above the kitchen area. I've searched here for old books and some new, always wondering about the protagonists of other eras who would visit the bookshop as if they had come out of an unwritten novel on Istanbul. Over Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence or Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's A Mind at Peace, I'd choose Peyami Safa's Fatih-Harbiye, set near the same old tram stop of the bookshop's Tünel district. Fatih depicts the "Eastern sprit and tradition of Istanbul"; Harbiye, the "Western sprit and tradition." The main protagonist, Neriman, faces an engagement dilemma between the...

Why read about animals: On the formation of the animal autobiography as a literary genre in the 18th–19th century British literature

The article presents an analysis of the genesis of the genre of animal autobiography in English literature at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. The emergence, formation and evolution of the genre is considered in three contexts. The ideas of Adam Smith and David Hume together with the pedagogical teachings of John Locke and Sarah Trimmer form the central philosophi cal concepts of the new genre: sentimental feeling, sympathy, concern for the well-being of another living being. Comparison of the animal autobiography with “novel of circulation”, a popular in the XVIII century type of novel about adventures of a thing, focuses readers atten tion on animate and inanimate narrator which leads to the didactics of a new genre. Auto biographical narratives such as “The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse” of Dorothy Kilner, “Adventures of a Donkey” of Arabella Argus, and “Black Beauty” of Anna Sewell are studied in the context of the 18th and 19th century novel culture and since the authors of such autobiogra phies were predominantly women, who were responsible for caregiving and education, within the female narrative strategies in biographies. Written over two centuries ago by women who appropriated the voices of animals and spoke of their well-being, animal autobiographies are studied in terms of ecofeminist critique and human-animal studies. It is concluded that this genre may be regarded as an enlightenment project, which had and still has not only a didac tic, but also an emancipatory function.

Brief trajectory of public policies on teacher education

The present work analyzes teachers' narratives about their graduation related to national and municipal public policies that impact teacher training. We sought to understand teachers’ formation based on Brazilian public policies related to municipal ones. For this, the study is focused on the legislation, having as its object the (auto) biography of four elementary school teachers from two Bahia municipalities. They reflect on life education and professional performance, focusing on the education policies of teachers. We can notice breaches in the system, setbacks in public policies for teacher training in recent decades, and the urgency of rethinking the process of teachers training at the municipal level, emphasizing the main training space and the practices that occur in the daily life of the school.

Fag, anti-fascist and non-banking teaching

In view of Paulo Freire's centennial this article was constructed with the aim of presenting contributions of Freirian pedagogy in the LGBTQI struggle for an anti-fascist and non-banking education, where the logic of oppression that interdicts the issues of this community in the production of knowledge intended by the school is no longer admitted. Thus, through the exploration of a memory of homophonic violence experienced in my teaching career as a teacher in high school classes in public basic education, I reflect on how the curriculum prescription system makes the production of a non-banking education unfeasible and interested in the immediate reality of the subjects of the pedagogical act, thus neglecting the production of a moral and ethical life in the sense of caring for the differences present in the school context. This produces a silencing in relation to gender and sexuality violence in pedagogical situations. On the occasion of this violence I was denounced to the police station under accusation of gender indoctrination, which supposedly deviated from what was prescribed in the sociology curriculum. The (auto)biography is then the methodological ground where the understandings present in this work are developed Keywords: Paulo Freire. LGBTQI. Anti-fascism.

La exposición de arte visual novelada por Enrique Vila-Matas

The Art Exhibition as a Novel by Enrique Vila-Matas. I set out to analyze, using the New Rhetoric methods, the book entitled Cabinet d`amateur, an oblique novel published by the contemporary Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas in 2019, at the same time as the opening of an exhibition whose curator he was in the Whitechapel Gallery in east London. Choosing the six visual art works, different in nature, concept, and aesthetics, from the collection of the “laCaixa” Foundation represents an occasion for the writer, led by curiosity, to investigate the works of art and to make a personal, purely subjective selection, on which he reflects in his heterogenic work as a genre: the catalogue of an exhibition, memoirs, essay (auto)biography, the skeleton of an oblique novel of the future. The selected works of art (I.G., the mysterious portrait of a woman by the painter Gerhard Richter; an installation, Petite, by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster; a videoclip, La lección respiratoria, belonging to the artist Dora García; Milonga, Carlos Pazos’s self-portrait; a detailed scenery, Une poignée de terre, by Miquel Barceló and a photography of Theban by Andreas Gursky, in an overlap of an aerial view with one detailed figure) are included in the text as a starting point for meditations and reflections upon the nature of the art in general, because the metaphor of the literary work, the novel of the future, is precisely the building of Rem Koolhass, the library in Seattle, in which different styles overlap and whose shapes are imprecise, undetermined, incongruent, disharmonic and lacking in logic. Literature, visual arts, music, and architecture are associated, and different figures are used to point out the aesthetic of the negative and the idea that form and content are interchangeable. Keywords: Enrique Vila-Matas, Cabinet d´amateur, an oblique novel, general-rhetoric analysis, the exhibition as a novel, literary biography

Monsters and Circles: Floating Signifiers in Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy

This essay discusses how Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker comics trilogy uses the multiple meanings and potential for plural interpretations possible in the medium of comics to suggest the chaotic and fluid states of the migrated self. Using the idea of the floating signifier together with the monster theses of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, the essay investigates the trilogy’s attempt to grasp the oscillating and layered qualities of identity by analyzing the formal aspects of comics as repetition and braiding. Through a close reading of the figure of the Minotaur and the repeated use of circles, the essay looks at how comics (auto)biography represents the many incarnations of its protagonist and deliberately refuses to pin down one version of this self.

Heidegger’s Trakl-Marginalia

Abstract In this article, I analyze Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copy of the 1946 Zurich edition of poems by Georg Trakl, which I discovered several years ago while conducting research in the castle of Heidegger’s hometown of Meßkirch. Although Heidegger’s marginalia in this volume are not extensive, they are significant for three reasons: they provide valuable insight into his reading of the spirit of Trakl’s poetic work and into the place in which Heidegger situates it; they frequently shed light on topics often left in the shadows by Heidegger and his expositors, topics such as (auto)biography, sexual difference, and Christianity; and they bear on Heidegger’s lifelong engagement with the status of being and even, at times, seem to call into question his published positions on it.

Kanttekeningen bij het Merkwaardig Verhaal van M.C. Vos

The Rev M.C. Vos (1759-1825), born at the Cape, clergyman in The Netherlands, at the Cape and Sri Lanka, is known as an initiator of the mission in South Africa. His life is mostly based on his autobiography Merkwaardig verhaal (1824). Some factual historical remarks learn, however, that his autobiography is far from a virtual (auto)biography, it is his story of God’s guidance in his life and an incentive to a religious revival.

Editorial note

The themes of colonisation and decolonisation dominate in this issue of JoALLS. The colonisation of African communities by European forces was so inhuman and brutal that it left skeletons of African people littered in affected areas on the continent. The trails of murder, massacre, plunder and displacement of defenceless and innocent Africans by marauding, bloodthirsty colonialists are unsavory, heart-rending and disgusting. The crucial role literature plays in documenting the trials and tribulations of Africans cannot be overemphasized. The historical novel and (auto) biography have always become handy in this regard, although caution should be taken on which perspective they are framed. As you read this issue, you will realise that the words 'Germans' and 'genocide' are what linguists call 'collocates'; in other words, you cannot talk of one of these two words without the other as the Germans' heinous crimes were meant to decimate the Herero and Nama populations of Germany South West Africa, now Namibia. The violence against the indigenous African people was not only frightening but also sickening.

Joachim von Sandrart, aristocrat-painter in Amsterdam, 1637-1645

In this article, the central issue is the interaction between Sandrart’s friendship networks, his art production and success in Amsterdam. His famous literary life’s work the Teutsche Academie, and Lebenslauf, his (auto) biography, will also be involved. Sandrart’s stay in Amsterdam (1637-1645) was the true springboard for his career. Upon arrival in Amsterdam, he immediately positioned himself in the network of influential entrepreneurs, connoisseurs and magistrates by moving into a patrician residence on the Keizersgracht. Sandrart’s wealthy bloedvrienden (family members) with important socio-political networks - the banker Johan de Neufville and the artist-agent Michel le Blon - further brokered easy access to the bourgeois elite network, which soon earned the aristocratic painter many important commissions. In the late 1630s and early 1640s, Sandrart was a pioneer in his use of the Van Dyckian way of portraying and a classicist Italian style in history painting. Although it took a further ten years before the change of style towards academism became definite in Amsterdam, Sandrart had been the artistic leader thereof. Moreover, he launched a new artists image and artistic lifestyle by positioning himself as the aristocratic-artist.

“Little man you’ve had a busy day”: Music in the onstage and offstage lives of “Master Harold”

Frequently referred to by its characters, and often approximated or imagined by them, music plays an important — if largely unacknowledged — role in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” … and the Boys. This play is widely considered one of Fugard’s most obviously autobiographical works, the setting and characters based on the places and people that defined his Port Elizabeth youth. This article explores a further congruence between the playwright’s (auto)biography and this play, namely the role of music in each. As we learn from his autobiographical texts, Cousins: A Memoir (1997) and Notebooks: 1960–1977 (1983), listening to and trying to make music have constituted important activities in Fugard’s lived experience, most notably during his childhood and youth. Consequently, music holds a particular currency for Fugard. This article argues that Fugard entertains a perception of music as a privileged form of creative expression rooted in his own unfulfilled desire to make music. It also argues that these attitudes are reflected in the symbolic power afforded to music in “Master Harold” … and the Boys, informing a tension in the play between the presence of music and, conversely, the absence thereof. Through exploring music in the onstage and offstage lives of Master Harold, this article offers a reading that reconciles the autobiographical dimensions of the play with its political significance. Doing so has particular consequences for reading the absence of Hally — Fugard’s fictional avatar — from the play’s final, tantalizing, image of a non-racial South Africa.

Education as the Space where Identity Processes Come to Play – Based on Educational Narratives of Women

In this text, the Author carries out theoretical discussion and presents the outcomes of her studies of the shaping process of women's identity in the context of a human (auto)biography, referring to the category of identity, putting particular stress to the educational biography, called a special type of a thematic biography (important for the category of identity), and a category of narration, of key importance for comprehending the phenomenon of auto(biography). A human biography is an invaluable source of information on their life and the person her/himself. Getting acquainted with the biography, looking for information about a given person, learning her/his story from her/himself (biography passed through an autobiographical account) or from the biographical materials, e.g. diaries, letters, memoirs and recollection of others. The Author says that one of the identity criteria is the sense of one's own continuity in time. This criterion can be fulfilled thanks to the autobiographical memory, or a memory of personal episodes and autobiographical facts. The problems of biography are closely connected with the autobiographical memory. In the text the Author presents three intertwined categories: identity, autobiographical memory and biography.

BOOK REVIEW Paul Nanu and Emilia Ivancu (Eds.) Limba română ca limbă străină. Metodologie și aplicabilitate culturală. Turun yliopisto, 2018. Pp. 1-169. ISBN: 978-951-29-7035-3 (Print) ISBN: 978-951-29-7036-0 (PDF).

BOOK REVIEW Paul Nanu and Emilia Ivancu (Eds.) Limba română ca limbă străină. Metodologie și aplicabilitate culturală. Turun yliopisto, 2018. Pp. 1-169. ISBN: 978-951-29-7035-3 (Print) ISBN: 978-951-29-7036-0 (PDF).

Traces of Female Voices and Women’s Lives in Tibetan Male Sacred Biography

ABSTRACTScholars have tended to overlook information about female religious specialists in thousands of biographies written about Tibetan male masters, as well as the multiple authorship of many of these texts. This article discusses normative gender portrayals and women's lives as they are described in the sacred (auto)biography of the nineteenth century Nyingmapa master, Trülzhik Tongdröl Dorje (1862–1922), composed by a contemporary male disciple. In the crazy yogin's life story, we find substantial information about his mother Tashi Tsomo, who the narrator(s) oscillates between glorifying and debasing, but in addition, we discern Tashi Tsomo's direct voice in the detailed descriptions of her suffering, the birth of her son and her role as tantric consort and mother. Tashi Tsomo did not become a religious virtuoso but sought spiritual transformation by nurturing and supporting male talent and the religious authority of her tantric partner and son. Piety and the quest for spiritual deliverance as means for self-affirmation and expression are still not fully understood in feminist scholarship, yet it was Tashi Tsomo's embodiment of Buddhist virtues that exalted her personal traits, the very same that constituted her agency, gave her life meaning and made the biographer describe her as an advanced female bodhisattva.

İKTİSAT VE İŞLETME TARİHİ KAYNAĞI OLARAK İŞ İNSANI HATIRAT VE OTO/BİYOGRAFİLERİ: TÜRKİYE’DE YAYIMLANAN ESERLER ÜZERİNE BİR ARAŞTIRMA

Bu çalışmanın iki temel amacı bulunmaktadır. İlk olarak, Türkiye’de iş insanlarını konu edinen hatırat, biyografi ve otobiyografi türündeki eserleri belirli boyutlara göre sınıflandırmak, ikincil olarak ise, iş dünyasına yönelik hatırat ve oto/biyografi eserlerinin iktisat tarihi ile işletme tarihi yazınlarına yönelik muhtemel katkılarını keşfetmektir. Bu bağlamda, çalışmanın yazarları tarafından derlenen 1947'den 2018'e kadar 278 kitap, içerik analizi ile ilgili kategorilere göre analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma sonuçları, Türk iş insanları üzerine yayınlanan kitapların çoğunun, onaylı eserler veya para karşılığı kaleme alınmış biyografiler olduğunu ve bu kitapların önemli bir bölümünün hagiografi niteliğinde olduğunu göstermektedir. Ayrıca, Türk iş insanları ile ilgili yayınlanan kitapların çoğunluğu, sıfırdan zirveye tırmanmaya ilişkin başarı öyküleridir. Araştırmanın sonuçları, Türk iş kadınlarının kitaplarının çok nadir olduğunu ve Türk iş kadınları hakkında sadece 8 kitap yayınlandığını göstermiştir.

Phenomenological Analysis into Students’ Self-Perceived Autonomy and Out-Of-Class Learning

Autonomy researchers have employed qualitative approaches to investigate a variety of issues. Ethnographies, case studies, language learning histories, (auto)biographies, among others, are featured in the literature. Some of these approaches fall under the umbrella of narrative research (Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2014; Early & Norton, 2012), which is emerging strongly in the L2 learning research (Barkhuizen, 2013; Benson 2014). This paper discusses another approach that has not been widely featured in autonomy or L2 learning research, phenomenology. “Phenomenology is a philosophical approach to the study of experience” (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009, p. 11). Phenomenology seeks “to determine what an experience means for the persons who have had the experience and are able to provide a comprehensive description of it” (Moustakas, 1994, p. 13). Phenomenological research was employed to explore the phenomenon of ‘institutionalised L2 learning and possibilities for autonomy in Trinidad & Tobago’ with thirty students in the context of a BA in Spanish programme. Students’ self-perceived autonomy emerged from the analysis and shed light on the sociocultural phenomena that enabled or hindered students’ development and exercise of autonomy. The paper illustrates how phenomenological research can be a valuable qualitative approach to explore sociocultural phenomena in learner autonomy.

Étreinte des fantômes de Véronique Taquin : Du rêve en réseau au roman-vidéo, un montage polybiographique

Lucques encounters Niels, his former lover who disappeared some fifteen years ago, “the phantom emerging from a dream outside of time” (Taquin, Étreinte; my translation). They meet at a hotel but cannot speak. To understand their past and their present desire, Lucques, a film editor and webmaster, invites the contributors of the private blog Odds to enlighten him, using text and video, about Niels’ personal story.Like an epistolary novel, Étreinte des fantômes is supposed to be written uniquely by the characters. They contribute using pseudonyms: Lucques, his psychoanalyst friend Ghostwriter, Nolan and Horatio, who seem well-acquainted with Niels, and five videographers… one of whom is Niels.This networked structure, combined with the power of dreams and images, illuminates both familial and political emotions. The meaning emerges from the prism of viewpoints and the interweaving of imaginations. The (auto)biography of the couple is a “polybiography.” Its tragedy is sublimated by a story that confronts the discontinuity of life through assemblage. The narrative voices speak through dreams and memories, texts, images, and sounds. The jump cuts call for interpretations. Caught up in the game, Ghostwriter herself reaches a deeper self-understanding, as all readers are invited to do by this text based on mise en abyme and self-reflection.

Элементы (авто)биографии в контексте коптской агиографии VII–VIII вв.

Элементы (авто)биографии в контексте коптской агиографии VII–VIII вв.

Nation-building Behind the Dike: Dutch Nationalism and the Visual Culture of Hydraulic Engineering

ABSTRACTThis article charts a crucial chapter in the history of Dutch nationalism, i. e. the topic of ‘water management’, by delving into the debate on the construction of the Afsluitdijk. The closure of the Zuiderzee by the construction of a dike is one of the most significant infrastructural projects of pre-war Netherlands. It was the deployment of a debate and a battle of pamphlets and furthermore gave rise to an extensive cultural production ranging from photo books, documentary films to literature. The emphasis in this article lies on the photographic representation of the enclosure. By distinguishing several story lines, this article aims to show how through the enclosure, the (auto)biography of the Netherlands as a people, a territory and a (modern/traditional) nation was re-imagined, renegotiated and re-invented.

The reinvention of the British Lions: amateurs, professionals and contested identities

ABSTRACTWhen rugby union became an openly professional sport in the mid-1990s it appeared that one of the institutions most under threat was the British Lions. Now more usually referred to as the British and Irish Lions, this touring team comes together every four years to take on one of the three leading southern hemisphere rugby nations in a three-match Test series. The first tour of the openly professional era in 1997 was celebrated for the ways in which important professional concepts were introduced, yet the touring party retained valued elements of the amateur ethos. The next two tours were not as successful, and led to questions about the very role of the Lions in the professional game. The 2009 tour saw a return to some of the values shaped during the age of amateurism and four years later the Lions achieved their first Test series win since 1997. Drawing upon the written (auto)biographies of those involved in elite-level rugby, this offers us an interesting case to unpack aspects of the fuzzy frontiers between amateurism and professionalism and some of the wider issues relating to sporting identities with specific reference to the topic of working-class amateurs.