Biographical Approach Research Articles

Domestic Dreaming: ‘Träumerei’ and the Popular Reception of Schumann

During the 1890s, Robert Schumann’s ‘Träumerei’ appeared in a greater number of editions than any other work by any composer in German-speaking lands. This article examines how and why ‘Träumerei’ gained its immense fin de siècle popularity and argues that biographical interpretative methods have supported the piece’s commercial success. The popularity of ‘Träumerei’ is further contextualized within the late nineteenth-century German market for sheet music and the piece’s relation, both in performance contexts and criticism, to the genre of Salonmusik. Interpreting ‘Träumerei’ through a biographical lens has also shaped the piece’s performance practice, informing discussions of what constitutes ‘sentimentalized’ performances of the piece. Given the sustained popularity of ‘Träumerei’, biographical approaches to listening and performance inspired by the piece have helped disseminate public knowledge of Schumann’s biography and perceptions of the particular inward quality of his music.

NARRATIVES AND BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH. USES, SCOPE AND CHALLENGES FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

This article reviews the scope and potential of research done using a biographical approach and the role that this approach adopts in giving voice to experiences lived by the subjects. Special emphasis is placed on the use of narratives to construct life stories, histories and testimonies, incorporating elements for a discussion about their use and enhancement as an approach for research and intervention. This article is written from an interdisciplinary perspective, recognizing the strengths of this approach that can be applied to diverse disciplines within social sciences, humanities and health sciences. This paper analyzes the trends that have influenced in studies from a biographical approach, considering historical and epistemological aspects. This is particularly relevant for disciplines related to human care, such as Nursing or Social Work that deal with narratives of participants who have faced situations of pain or illness. The narrative-biographical approach allows us to retrieve these histories and to contribute to the memories of people willing to narrate their experiences. The article concludes by examining the contemporary uses of this approach both in research and in social interventions. Current challenges related to this approach are discussed and also the possibility of combining it with multimedia devices and the use of information technology.

Daily life and religious holidays in Romania during the communist period

This study tries to expose the situation of the main religious holidays during the communist period in Romania. In Roumania, we know that the religious holydays were one of the targets targeted by the Communist Party, because they hold, besides their well-known functions – religious, cultural, playful, aesthetic, cosmic – also an important ethnic, community function, what activate the goal of the study. The commu-nist leaders wanted Christianity to be faded from the public space, but it was summoned socially in the form of commemorations, so it leads the novelty of the investigation. There are several works devoted to religion in post communist Europe. The problematic relationship between the state and society, in all its forms of existence, and the religious phenomenon, between the temporal power and the transcendent power occupy a fundamental place in the sociological and historical thought. Patrick Michel, studying in his works on the specific issue of the relationship between religion the Church and totalitarian power, explains how much religion has suffered the hostile attitude of the power that tried to reduce its presence in the world social space he has just arrogated. It recalls the efforts of this one, to remain in the socio-political field, by refusing the rules of the political game introduced by the totalitarian power, by infiltrating inside the social field, in all its components, for to be present and participate in the existence of autono-mous social spaces. In the Balkan countries, the image of a religion abused both by the identity and the political often revives with the discourse of post-communist religious renewal. In Bulgaria or Albania, there is this vision of religiosity completely stifled by the totalitarian regime. The vision of a religious emptiness imposed by the previous regime is specific to research on religious in the post-communist era, a vision that emphasizes the repression of Christian religiosity and the resulting consequences for society. The researchers analyzed what happened during the socialist period and how religious life continued under the appearance of forced athe-ism. Conclusions. The biographical approach served as a starting point for field investigations aimed at documenting, from case-by-case reconstruction, stories of family trajectories, the multitute ritual solutions adopted during the communist period. I conducted exploratory surveys in Oltenia, the western part of Romanian Wallachia, which remained essentially a rural area, with the exception of the only big city of Craiova, (Oltenia's historical capital is the most important urban and administrative center district – 300,000 inhabitants) one of the largest cultural centers of the country. These first investigations that I conducted reveal the existence of a set of clandestine practices that were introduced, under the communist regime, to replace the absence of the Church in the main moments related to the life cycle, especially for baptism and marriage, the prohibition of all religious attendance imposed on Party cadres, and the attempt to completely de-sacralize religious holidays. I also realized a work in the local archives of Oltenia, to expose the me-dia of the time, the written press was the main means of the propa-gation of the new ideology. We had tried to expose the gradual way in which the communist system tried to impose the calendar that marked "the new era": we could distinguish the means used by the regime to manipulate the opinions and behavior of people regarding Religious holidays. These techniques of modeling the mentality of people are found abundantly in all the documents of that time. The effort to supplant the religious of daily life is also exerted on the celebration of festivals and calendar rites. The most followed restrictions are applied to Christic feasts (especially Christmas and Easter), while other festivals related to the commemoration of saints are recovered by the socialist ritual system. These are saints that the oral tradition has dedicated as patrons of economic activities (livestock, viticulture, beekeeping), a resource exploited by both the regime and the ordinary social actors. The Christian holiday becomes a folkloric entertainment.

The role of parents’ mobility behavior for dynamics in car availability and commute mode use

Recent studies have analyzed travel behavior over the life course through the lens of the mobility biography approach. Similarities in the effects of certain key events on travel behavior have been found. At the same time, family background influences changes in travel behavior in the long run. However, to date, the role of parents’ mobility behavior on their adult children’s mobility behavior has not yet been analyzed. In addition, there has been no empirical analysis of mobility biographies that simultaneously considers aging, key events, changes in residential location, changes in commute distance and parental socialization. This paper uses intergenerational mobility biographies and investigates the role of these variables in explaining changes in car availability and commuting mode use. To this end, a unique retrospective dataset is used of more than 1600 mobility biographies of persons born around 1957 as well as the mobility biographies of their parents. Markov models are used to analyze mobility behavior over the life course. The results show that parents’ behavior is not directly associated with the behavior of their adult descendants. However, age, attitude towards the car, gender and changes in the built environment are important predictors for dynamics in car availability. Commute mode changes are dominantly associated with changes in commute distance but also with changes in car availability and attitude. Key events such as divorce or childbirth are less important. The results suggest that there are indirect parental socialization effects via residential location and attitude on car availability and commute mode use. This paper points out the importance of the life course, changes in commute distance and changes in the built environment for car availability and commute mode use and is an example of the application of Markov models for the analysis of quantitative mobility biographies.

James Burnes (1801–1862)

James Burnes (1801–1862) was one of the most charismatic and polarizing figures of nineteenth century Scottish freemasonry. He is best remembered for his work on the history of the Knight Templars and as the primary mover of the first Indian lodge specifically designed to welcome native candidates. In the Indian presidency of Bombay, he became an enthusiastic promoter of freemasonry and a zealous political agent defending British colonial interests wherever his travels took him. Although much has been written about his masonic career in India, there is no extensive biography of James Burnes, or at least no satisfactory attempt at a biographical approach that would seek to situate his masonic career within the more general frame of his career as a soldier and empire-builder. This study is therefore meant both as biographical approach that seeks to attempt to offer a more accurate insight into the life and works of this fascinating character, and as an insight into the intricate relationship between freemasonry and imperialism.

Holding the reins: Miss Ernst and twentieth-century Classics

Prosopographical research on the history of classical studies since the nineteenth century makes only scant reference to women who played an active role in academia. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that female academics performed key functions: our paper focuses on Juliette Ernst (1900–2001), who edited the Annee Philologique for almost sixty years and who, as Secretary-General of the International Federation of Associations of Classical Studies (Federation Internationale des Associations d’Etudes Classiques, FIEC), played a key role in international classical studies for twenty-five years. Adopting a biographical approach, we analyze the conditions of Ernst’s scientific activities to explore a woman’s scope of action in male-dominated twentieth-century classical studies. We also discuss biography as a method for a gender-oriented history of science. We study the relationship between the external image of women academics and their self-image. Finally, we consider how the ‘biographical illusion’ involved in retroactively constructing a coherent life might be avoided to identify the supra-individual conditions and the action taken by individual women in the field of classical studies.

D. D. Gomes Casseres: acercamiento biográfico a un colombiano transnacional

D. D. Gomes Casseres: acercamiento biográfico a un colombiano transnacional

Reflexión, acción, decisión: trayectorias en la construcción de la identidad de género en el patriarcado gitano

This article collects a version of the current moment of tension, change and emergence of feminine individuality among gypsy women from Zaragoza. It was based on the premise that the convergence of personal attributes such as identity and gender (both key concepts of the individual construction) were a challenge to the patriarchal structure -ethnic identity- understanding that when women become aware of herself -gender identity- the tension between the traditional and the modern paradigm emerges. The qualitative and biographical approach (based on narrative and conversation, participant observation and qualitative analysis based on grounded theory) has allowed us to analyze from two key dimensions, the psychological and the contextual, the sequential introspective path through which they advance (reflection-decision-action) and the vital trajectories that are conforming when trying to fit personal growth with the non-affectation of the patriarchal gypsy structure, its culture and its system of values and mandates.

Buddhist nuns in Nepal and women's empowerment: A biographical approach

While biographies of monks have proliferated over the centuries, there has been precious little writing on the life stories of the female members of the monastic community. Addressing the need for biographies about contemporary Buddhist nuns, and on helping these women to find their voices, this biographical narrative study documents and explores the life stories of a group of Vajrayana nuns residing in a Buddhist abbey in Kathmandu, Nepal. This study centers on concepts of empowerment but aims to explore how a group of contemporary nuns are utilizing and redefining their situated empowerment within their religious community and beyond. Through in-depth interviews, this research examines ways in which these contemporary nuns exercise and contest power within a Buddhist institution, predicated on core religious teachings that profess egalitarianism yet situated within a larger sociocultural milieu that is notoriously oppressive to women and girls. It explores what empowerment opportunities and challenges they face as twenty-first century nuns, and how their roles and identities as Buddhist nuns are evolving in increasingly empowering ways.

Towards a new methodology for working with historic theatre costume: A biographical approach focussing on Ellen Terry’s ‘Beetlewing Dress’

Direct engagement with the material culture of historic theatre costume, particularly surviving costumes, has the potential to make a significant contribution to the existing discourse surrounding costume and performance. The comparative absence of the surviving costumes from such discussions stems in part from the fact that the value of this source material has yet to be fully recognized, researched and theorized. Responding directly to that challenge, this article unites approaches from dress history, theatre history and material culture to offer a specific methodology for the investigation and analysis of theatre costume, which is founded upon the examination and assessment of such garments. Nineteenth-century actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928) will be used as a case study through which to present this new methodology. Most famous for the 22 years she spent as the leading lady of the Lyceum Theatre, this discussion will focus on one of Terry’s more celebrated Shakespearean roles, Lady Macbeth. It will explore the design, creation and afterlife of costumes worn by Terry in the 1888 Lyceum production of Macbeth, and consider the crucial part they played, not simply in the original staging, but also in shaping the legacy of both performance and performer. The close analysis of this key example from Terry’s theatrical wardrobe will establish the factors fundamental to the interpretation of such garments and demonstrate the evidence offered from material culture sources, most importantly, surviving costumes. Through this discussion, the article will offer a new methodology for the analysis of historic theatre costume, which can be employed in the study of other figures, theatres and periods, opening up a new and productive direction for future research.

Cultural Continuity and Social Resistance: The Chronology of Megalithic Funerary Practices in Southern Iberia

Inspired by the biographical approach to the study of material culture, a radiocarbon dating programme was undertaken to explore the chronology and temporality of the megalithic monuments in south-eastern Iberia. Instead of one or two dates per tomb, the normal way of approaching this complex issue, we carried out a complete radiocarbon dating series of single tombs based on human remains. We focused our attention on four tholos-type tombs in the cemetery of El Barranquete (Almería, Spain). According to the new radiocarbon series modelled in a Bayesian framework, four main conclusions can be drawn: that the cemetery shows a very long period of funerary activity, which began in the late fourth millennium and ended in the last centuries of the second millennium calbc; that continuity of ritual practices attained an unexpected importance during the Bronze Age; that interments, which fall into cultural periods that would be unthinkable if only the typological properties of the grave goods were considered, occurred; and that each tomb had a complex and very different biography.

Microbiografías y estudios de memoria en Chile: observaciones metodológicas desde la investigación social

Este artículo presenta las microbiografías como técnica de investigación social de la memoria. A partir de observaciones metodológicas desprendidas de un estudio sobre violaciones a los derechos humanos en la localidad rural de Paine, se identifica la microbiografía en los métodos cualitativos y en el enfoque biográfico de las ciencias sociales. Finalmente, se desarrolla el uso de las microbiografías de acuerdo a su aplicación en un estudio de la memoria en Chile.

Classroom biographies: Teaching and learning in evolving material landscapes (c. 1960‐2015)

AbstractDespite growing interest in redesigning the material landscape of education, relatively little is known about the impact of these evolving classrooms. This study aimed to gain insight into the physical learning environment and the potential pedagogical impacts thereof. A ‘biographical approach’ (c.1963‐2015) was used to explore the long‐term socio‐material landscapes where teachers and pupils, classroom material and spatiality, and teaching practices were entangled. Stimulated recall interviews were conducted in Flanders (Belgium) with primary school teachers. Teacher‐generated floorplans detailing their material classroom over time, transcribed oral accounts elaborating on these, and supportive data sources were aggregated and analysed by theme. The resulting identification of six key themes shed light on the evolving architectural and infrastructural developments, as well as triggers and teaching impacts thereof amongst the interviewed teachers. Findings show that negative school evaluations urging school intervention, and teachers’ proactive engagement within their classrooms, were the main catalysts of change. Moreover, evolving classroom layouts, in addition to the affordances of upgraded equipment, can be associated to changes in teachers’ practices. It can be concluded that the classroom is becoming an action context as the result of the inextricable mediating agencies identified.

LIFE: BIOGRAPHY AS CONFLICTUAL COHERENCE

In the early 1970s, when I was a graduate student, biography was considered “an unloved stepchild” of the historical discipline. The naive empiricism of its soup-to-nuts narratives seemed deaf to any theory that might call the biographer's craft into question. In 2009, the American Historical Review honored the genre of biography with a roundtable on its creative renewal. Oddly (and regrettably) there was no mention of the work of Jerrold Seigel in any of the roundtable essays, though he had published three innovative biographical works over the previous thirty years. Characterizing Seigel as a biographer by trade would, to be sure, seriously diminish the scope of his scholarship. But two of his seven books have been full biographies, and in two others a biographical approach has been central to his modus operandi. A leading figure in refashioning the genre, he has been quite conscious of the implications of that commitment. In 1987 he ended an article on Durkheim with a challenge: “our knowledge of the human world must be able to survive the recognition of its personal sources.” Three years later he concluded an article on “the personal roots of Foucault's thinking” with another provocation to recent preoccupations in the discipline: “the proclaimed death of the subject is not some newly discovered set of relations that produce the illusion of human will and intentions as residues of their silent operation, but the action of a subjectivity that will not speak its name.”

Badacz wobec doświadczeń dorosłych w kontekście biograficznej perspektywy badawczej

Przyglądając się współczesnym praktykom badawczym realizowanym w obszarze nauk społecznych, można dostrzec wyraźne zainteresowanie biografią. Obserwacja losów jednostek, (roz)poznawanie mikroświatów społecznych z perspektywy indywidualnych biografii, a także analiza i poszukiwanie znaczeń indywidualnych doświadczeń życiowych człowieka cieszy się dużym zainteresowaniem, ale również zaufaniem wśród badaczy. Można także dostrzec, iż badacze z coraz większą uwagą i rozwagą zastanawiają się nad prawomocnością i poprawnością metodologiczną realizowanych przez siebie projektów, co jest szczególnie ważne w sytuacji konieczności problematyzowania i dookreślania tożsamości metodologicznej podejścia biograficznego. Niniejszy tekst jest głosem w dyskusji na temat rodzajów tzw. badań biograficznych realizowanych w obszarze andragogiki oraz ich istoty. Punktem wyjścia jest postrzeganie badań z wykorzystaniem biografii przez pryzmat biograficznej perspektywy badawczej, która przyjmować może przynajmniej trzy formy. Są nimi: podejście biograficzne, podejście auto/biograficzne i podejście autobiograficzne. Osią rozważań staje się refleksja związana z dookreśleniem poszczególnych podejść w odniesieniu do konkretnych projektów badawczych, z uwzględnieniem specyficznej roli/ról, jaką pełni w nich badacz. W tekście zostaje również zasygnalizowany wątek odnoszący się do rozumienia procesu badawczego z perspektywy procesu uczenia się. Źródłem podejmowanych rozważań są indywidualne doświadczenia badaczek, płynące z realizacji projektu, w którym wykorzystano podejście auto/biograficzne.

Про нередукційну біографію та вічне самоперевершення (Лютий Т., Ніцше. Самоперевершення. Київ: Темпора, 2016)

The publication of Taras Lyuty’s book of Nietzsche is a salient event in the philosophical life of Ukraine in 2016. Given the fact that the book covers a great number of different issues, the reviewer decides to focus on those of them which correspond to his own academic interests, related primarily to the history of psychoanalysis and biographical approach within the historiography of philosophy. As it is shown on the review, Lyuty masterfully avoids such a trap as biographical reductionism. He neither reduces his hero’s teaching to his life, nor isolates the former from the latter. The reviewer pays a special attention to Lyuty’s delineation of intellectual links between the great philosopher and some of his predecessors (such as Ralf Waldo Emerson) and followers (some pioneers of depth psychology). In the end, the reviewer demonstrates that a very deep and systematic analysis of Nietzsche’s biography and philosophical heritage carried out by Lyuty leaves a room for further productive reflections and interpretations.

“Russenlager” and forced labour. Soviet prisoners of war in Bremen - “home” as a reference for historical memory Creating an exhibition on a voluntary basis: a case study

This article focuses on emotional approaches within the framework of the exhibition “Russenlager” and Forced Labour in Bremen. Having traced local events and circumstances related to general historical topics, we expose on 14 displays a network of camps of Soviet POWs (“Russenlager”), work commandos, places of labour and the profiting companies in Bremen. Accordingly, ‘home’ is the emotional core, combined with a face-to-face approach presenting individual Soviet POWs, depicted on facsimile registration cards, issued by the Wehrmacht, which we use as guides through the exhibition. Another biographical approach extends into the present, involving the contact with a relative of a Soviet POW, who was forced to work in Bremen until he perished.Key words: Soviet POW, forced labour, collective memory, home, emotional approach.

Waltzing with Strindberg: Exploring Practices of Memory in A Dream Play

Abstract The aim of this article is to explore embodied practices of memory in Strindberg’s drama A Dream Play from a dance perspective. It is demonstrated that a profound exploration of this hitherto underexplored perspective can provide a fuller and more critically productive understanding of the drama. Even if in recent years international Strindberg studies has moved away from narrowly text-oriented and biographical approaches to his work, and toward multimedia, visual and multisensory aspects of it, dance and choreography are still rare topics within the field. In the article we first look at how Strindberg employed dance in the dramatic text for A Dream Play, and then expand on his dance contexts. Thirdly, we turn to a TV version of A Dream Play from 1980 to explore in particular how the waltz, an immensely popular dance form in Strindberg’s time, evokes and embodies cultural memories in the production. What is presented in the article draws on and further expands our work within the project «Dream-playing across borders: accessing the non-texts of Strindberg’s A Dream Play in Düsseldorf, 1915–18 and beyond», at the University of Gothenburg.

Africans in the Old South: Mapping Exceptional Lives across the Atlantic World

More than 12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean and then enslaved in the Americas, a number so vast as to defy simple understanding. A growing number of historians are moving beyond the macrohistorical analysis of numbers and are instead focusing on the stories of individuals and small groups. In this deeply researched and beautifully written book, Randy J. Sparks adopts this microhistorical biographical approach. He maps a few exceptional lives of Africans in the southern colonies and states between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and the results are as powerfully effective as he had hoped. Rejecting the large overviews that seek to illuminate the lives of supposedly typical enslaved people by researching scraps of information about a great many often nameless and forgotten people, Sparks chooses to capture “the unfamiliar, the exceptional, the lives of men and women who defy our expectations of what their lives should have been like” (p. 2).

The First Missionaries of The Church Missionary Society in Sierra Leone, 1804–1816: A Biographical Approach

Abstract:Many early records in West Africa arise from missionary accounts. While they may contain rich ethnographic data, this detail should be approached only after analysis and consideration of the authors of the sources in question. In early Sierra Leone, important data was recorded on behalf of the English evangelical Church Missionary Society, but the missionaries reporting on the ground comprised an insufficiently studied group of German-speaking Pietist Lutherans originating from central and northern Europe. This article analyzes the authors of this information in order to approach their accounts with a better appreciation of existing bias and to better engage with how diverse sociocultural perspectives affect the historical record.