Use Of Memoirs Research Articles

Перелом в войне за испанское наследство 1701-1714 гг.: Дунайская военная кампания 1704 года

The purpose of this article is to identify the peculiarities of Western European military affairs as illustrated by a particular campaign of the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The article is of interest in light of comparing military affairs of Western Europe and Russia at the beginning of the 18th century, military art during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the Great Northern War (1700-1721). Scientific novelty: the study presents an episode of Western European military history not yet reflected in domestic historiography, combat operations between Franco-Bavarian troops and the allied army under the command of John Marlborough on the Danube theater of war in the summer of 1704. The study is carried out with wide use of memoir, epistolary and documentary sources. During the 1704 campaign on the Danube and in Bavaria, such typical features of the military art of the 18th century were manifested as excessive dependence on supplies and logistics, positional expectant nature of hostilities, their indecision and false methodism. As a result of the study, the author came to the conclusion that the Franco-Bavarian coalition was more inclined towards the canons of the military strategy that had developed by the beginning of the 18th century. It operated within the framework of positional maneuver tactics, enthusiasm for fighting on communications, demonstrating wait-and-see and passivity. French marshals were distinguished by their adherence to the template and therefore were predictable and expected. Unlike the enemy, John Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy managed to break out of the generally accepted tactical canons. During the 1704 campaign, they showed swiftness and offensive character, imposed a decisive aggressive struggle on the enemy, the culmination of which was a resounding victory at Blenheim on August 13, 1704.

Teachers' Opinions on the Use of Memoirs in Social Studies Course

Sosyal Bilgiler dersinde hatırat kullanımına ilişkin öğretmen görüşlerinin incelendiği bu çalışma, özel durum çalışması desenlerinden biri olan araçsal durum çalışması deseni çerçevesinde tasarlanmıştır. Araştırmanın çalışma grubunu gönüllü 40 Sosyal Bilgiler öğretmeni oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmanın verileri, çevrim içi ortamda hazırlanan açık uçlu soruların yer aldığı bir form aracılığıyla, 2020-2021 eğitim ve öğretim yılında toplanmıştır. Elde edilen veriler, NVivo 10 programında içerik analizine tabi tutularak çözümlenmiştir. Araştırmadan elde edilen bulgulara göre öğretmenlerin hatırat kelimesini daha çok geçmişle ilişkilendirerek açıkladıkları ve genel itibariyla literatürle uyumlu açıklamalarda bulunabildikleri görülmüştür. Bununla birlikte, öğretmenlerin öğrenilen bilgilerin kalıcılığını artırmak ve konuyu ilgi çekici kılmak amacıyla, Sosyal Bilgiler dersinde en çok tarihsel konuların öğretiminde hatırat kullandıkları tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca öğretmenlerin Sosyal Bilgiler öğretimi sürecinde hatıratın başta konu ve kazanıma uygunluk olmak üzere, birtakım kriterlerin dikkate alınarak kullanılması gerektiğine dair görüşlere sahip oldukları belirlenmiştir. Ancak öğretmenlerin, Sosyal Bilgiler Dersi Öğretim Programı’ndaki hatırat kullanılabilecek konular hakkında yeterince bilgi sahibi olmadıkları ve Sosyal Bilgiler dersinde hatırat kullanımında kendilerini mesleki açıdan tam anlamıyla yeterli bulmadıkları ortaya koyulmuştur. Diğer taraftan araştırmada, Sosyal Bilgiler dersinde hatırat kullanımında öğretmen, öğrenci, ders kitabı ve programdan kaynaklanan bazı sorunların yaşandığı belirlenmiştir. Son olarak araştırmada öğretmenlerin, Sosyal Bilgiler dersinde hatırat kullanımının eğitsel değerine ilişkin kısmi farkındalığa sahip oldukları ve hatıratın Sosyal Bilgiler dersinde etkili kullanımı konusunda mesleki eğitime ihtiyaç duydukları sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.

Space, Emotion, and Gender

This article examines Kym Ragusa’s The Skin between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging as a gendered transcultural narrative from the standpoint of spatial theory. In order to do so, it contextualizes the text within the framework of memoir writing and subsequently analyzes the representation of varied emotional spaces in the process of recovering one’s identity as displayed by the narrative voice. This research contends that the use of memoir, a genre particularly used by ‘marginal’ voices, is an adequate means to critically reflect on the (de)construction of identity as well as convey alternative patterns of gender relations and cultural negotiations. In addition, it stresses the central role of space and emotions in reflecting the transculturality and intersectionality of the diasporic and gendered subject.

АЛИШЕР НАВОИЙ ТАРЖИМАИ ҲОЛИНИ ЎРГАНИШДА ТАРИХИЙ АСАРЛАРНИНГ ЎРНИ

The life and work of the creators are naturally studied in connection with the historical and literary environment of the period in which he lived. In some places, it is expedient to compare the artists with their contemporaries, and in some places, the attitude of their fans, and vice versa, to give information about their opponents. In order to inform students about the biography of the artist, the teacher will need to study the most important information, use the necessary methodological manuals and literature in order to make the lesson meaningful and interesting. In particular, the use of memoirs written by his contemporaries, architectural works, or memoirs and letters written by the artist about himself, also provides a meaningful lesson. Either the works created by the artist also in some sense complement the information about his personality. Key words and phrases: Alisher Navoi's way of life. Hasbu hol. Architectural work. Memory of contemporaries. Tazkiranavislik. Historical sources. Translation hol. Autobiographical work. Textbook "Literature". Method of teaching and explanation.

Using Memoirs and Autobiographies To Enhance the Teaching of Abnormal Child Psychology

Memoirs and autobiographies can be rich sources of real-world information for students in psychology classes. These resources have been used in adult-oriented abnormal psychology classes, but have yet to be explored for use in courses on abnormal child psychology. This manuscript reviews the use of memoirs and autobiographies in adult-oriented abnormal psychology classes and then explores the use of memoirs and autobiographies in abnormal child psychology classes. In the Appendix, lists of memoirs and autobiographies are provided that instructors can use as a resource in the selection of books for abnormal child psychology classes. Data are analyzed regarding undergraduate students’ opinions about the use of memoirs in an abnormal child psychology class and an investigation of learning outcomes for classes with and without assigned memoirs is provided. Overall, the use of memoirs and autobiographies appears to be a promising way of enhancing the teaching of abnormal child psychology.

Friends in Exile: Italo Svevo & James Joyce by Brian Moloney

Reviewed by: Friends in Exile: Italo Svevo & James Joyce by Brian Moloney John McCourt (bio) FRIENDS IN EXILE: ITALO SVEVO & JAMES JOYCE, by Brian Moloney. Leicester, England: Troubadour Publishers, 2018. 276 pp. £13.95. Friends in Exile is the first serious book dealing with the relationship between James Joyce and Italo Svevo. It follows Stanley Price's thin James Joyce and Italo Svevo: The Story of a Friendship, which appeared in 2016 to understandably mixed reviews given its second-hand feel and Price's non-engagement with the bulk of critical material on the subject in Italian.1 Friends in Exile is an altogether more scholarly work and yet has garnered little critical attention thus far. This is a great pity, because few, if any, scholars are better equipped to jointly tackle Joyce and Svevo than Brian Moloney, Emeritus Professor of Italian at the University of Hull. He has spent a lifetime working on Svevo and played a key role in shaping contemporary Svevo studies and giving him his rightful place within the modernist canon. Unlike Price, he reads Svevo and his critics in the original Italian, which should be a prerequisite for anyone taking on the Italian Swabian. His handling in this book of the sometimes tense but always fecund relationship between the two writers is detailed, nuanced, insightful, and, at times, intimate. Even if a social gulf separated them—and meant that Joyce (not to mention Nora) was never invited to the Sunday afternoon musical gatherings at Villa Veneziani—at the core of their connection lay something more important than mere social pleasantry, that is, a "mutual recognition" that "led to the growth of a literary friendship" (39). Joyce, Moloney claims, "would have seen in Svevo a novelist who was consistent in his choice of themes, but also an artist who did not repeat himself" (37): in other words, a writer after his own heart. Although occasionally a little meandering and repetitive (the book gathers essays written over several decades that have been stitched, for the most part felicitously, together), the story unfolds winningly and gently with a carefully constructed Triestine context emerging vividly. Passing mentions of the greater Joyce family are often spot on, as when, for example, he quotes Svevo's niece as saying that Nora "a Trieste visse appartata" (lived a secluded life in Trieste) (43). The author makes ample use of memoirs not readily accessible (especially to the English reader), but is wise in treating such sources with caution. Friends in Exile will be of great interest to readers of Joyce and Svevo alike and would have brought renewed attention to Joyce's Triestine sojourn this year—2020—when the International James Joyce symposium was scheduled to return, for the third time, to the city; sadly, because of the pandemic, it has been postponed until 2021. Moloney points out that Joyce's encounter with Svevo was key to his remaining in Trieste for both personal and literary reasons (and [End Page 445] are the two areas ever really separate in Joyce?). He rightly asserts that Svevo was a key model, or perhaps the key model, for Leopold Bloom and the source of so much of the Jewish background in Ulysses. As Moloney writes, "Svevo had thought long and hard about his Jewishness and its meaning: he supplied Joyce with ideas and information about Jews and Jewishness" (xiii). If Svevo was both a source and a support for Joyce, it was not (unusually for Joyce) all one-way traffic; in fact, it was quite the opposite. Svevo had published Una vita in 1892 and Senilità in 1898 to general disinterest both in Trieste and beyond, and he was, in 1902, so disappointed that he resolved to give up publishing any more of his writings.2 Five years later, when Joyce read these two novels, he immediately saw their value, hailing Senilità as an unjustly unrecognized masterpiece. Moloney speculates that "Joyce very probably read Una vita as Svevo's 'chapter of the moral history' of Trieste" (35), which may be true. Even if it is not, there is little doubt that Joyce was so impressed by his friend's writing that he singlehandedly restored Svevo's...

Гармония теории и практики в трудах В.В. Голубкова

The purpose of the article is to analyze the methodological heritage of V.V. Golubkov, to establish links between the practical activities of the teacher and his scientific publications, teaching and methodical manuals, the definition and updating of the main directions of research of the scientist’s methodological system. The article uses the comparative historical research method, with the use of memoirs and archival sources. The authors characterize the methodological concept of V.V. Golubkov as fundamental and theoretically substantiated, based on the achievements of pedagogy, psychology, literary criticism. The article highlights the main features of this concept: the significance of the issues of methodology and methodical thesaurus in research on the methodology of teaching literature; “psychologism” as attention to the personality of the reader, their reading interests, and features of the artistic perception; a take on literature as human knowledge expressed in artistic images; considering reading as a creative process; the development of specific techniques for the modern reading of classics and the development of critical thinking of students; statement of the problem of stimulating personal memories, emotions, imagination and independent judgments of students; introduction of the concept of “sense of proportion in the study of a work of art”, etc. In conclusion of the article, the authors deduce that the methodological system of V.V. Golubkov has laid the foundations for teaching literature in the 20th century and can be regarded as a tradition that still retains its significance and relevance in the face of changing sociocultural realities and approaches to the study of literary text in lessons of literature.

A People's History of the German Revolution by William Pelz

Reviewed by: A People's History of the German Revolution by William Pelz Andrew Donson A People's History of the German Revolution. By William Pelz. London: Pluto, 2018. Pp. 180. Paper $24.00. ISBN 978-0745337104. Like E.P. Thompson and Howard Zinn, William Pelz, who died shortly before this book appeared in print, was a scholar whose left-wing politics shaped his research. Pelz spent most of his career at a community college while being an activist in the socialist movement in Chicago. He was especially committed to issues faced by working-class students; for most of his career, fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged was more important to him than output of scholarship. Only in the last four years before his death did he begin to publish books. His productivity in those years was remarkable: a biography on the revolutionary socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht; an edited collection of writings by American communist Eugene Debs; a survey titled A People's History of Modern Europe; and finally the book under review here. The titles of his last two books were references to Zinn's A People's History of the United States. In the first third of the book, which covers the social history of German industrialization and World War I, Pelz liberally quotes autobiographies of workers describing their hard labor, bad housing, and mean bosses. In this narrative, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the savior who fought for the workers despite government repression. Pelz emphasizes that, already in 1914, working-class soldiers saw that the war was a swindle, and they had no confidence in their officers. Meanwhile, on the [End Page 383] home front, women protested for bread and peace. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the mass strike in the armaments industries in January 1918 were inspirations to German workers everywhere. This narrative sets the stage for portraying the German workers as tragic heroes. When the Kaiser abdicated, they tried to introduce social justice through mass protests and council democracy but were smothered by cowardly Social Democrats terrified of revolution. Pelz claims "there is overwhelming evidence that the SPD leadership did betray their members, the common people and socialism" (68). To support this point of view, he marshals evidence from many memoirs by people who believed the same. This literature details the brutality of the SPD in crushing the Spartacist uprising in January 1919, the general strike in March, the Bavarian Soviet in April, and the rebellions following the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. In the historiography of the revolution, this book stands out for recognizing the agency of women and putting war and revolution into their material, everyday context of hunger. It does not contribute substantial original research on either topic, but no other book on the revolution argues as emphatically that working-class women helped bring down the regime by their protests demanding peace. Few other historians have speculated that the revolution failed in part because women were "pushed to the sidelines" (128). Written in a plain style, with a clear point of view and a narrative made readable through the extensive use of memoirs, the book is a breath of fresh air. However, the sixty-six pages the book devotes to the revolution itself are one-sided. Few historians today would call the Social Democrats traitors, as the Communist Party and later the SED in the German Democratic Republic always held. In the end, this book identifies the "people" with the left-socialist working class. Farmers, artisans, white-collared workers, middle-class professionals, and laborers who supported parliamentary democracy but were skeptical of socialism—in other words, the majority of Germans—have no place. Pelz did not consult the foundational German-language monographs on the revolution by Eberhard Kolb, Peter von Oertzen, Wolfgang Elben, Susanne Miller, and many others. These historians drew upon deep empirical research to argue that, as Pelz indeed suggests, the SPD made missteps, such as rushing to elections for a national assembly before purging the army and bureaucracy, as the soldier and worker councils wanted. But these historians contextualized the decisions of the SPD: The party lacked experts to staff the government offices that were overseeing the...

Memoir as a form of auto-ethnographic research for exploring the practice of transnational higher education in China

In this paper, I argue that memoir, as a form of auto-ethnographic research, is an appropriate method for exploring the complexities and singularities in the practice of western educational practitioners who are immersed in the social reality of offshore higher education institutions, such as those in Mainland China. I illustrate this proposition by showing how my own use of memoir is guided by a need to interrogate the unique experiences of my past life as ‘the foreigner’, ‘the special one’, ‘the imported expert’ and ‘the cultural outsider’, in order to lay bare the complexity of what it means to work and live in China as a foreign teacher and be recognised as different. I am interested in the notion of foreignness, and the ambiguities that arise when one operates as a teacher in a foreign culture, with a misguided and naïve understanding of one's own specialness as the foreign expert. My research methodology is based on critically reflective writing that acknowledges the multiplicity of historical, cultural and social differences, and the uniqueness of all individuals, whilst recognising that difference, at its heart, is a matter of relationship(s). This form of writing as educational research makes it possible to challenge some of the generalisations western scholars inadvertently make when writing about their teaching experiences in China.

‘Are you a Billy, or a Dan, or an old tin can?’: street violence and relations between Catholics, Jews and Protestants in the Gorbals during the inter-war years

ABSTRACT:This article makes use of memoirs, autobiographies and oral interviews in order to consider the relations between the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant communities in the Gorbals. While there was considerable variation in individual experience, there were also particular occasions where inter-ethnic relations were all too predictable, almost following a ‘calendar of conflict’. The article shows that, while there was a degree of anti-Semitism in the area, integration between the Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the district was facilitated by a number of factors. Ultimately, anti-Semitism was mediated through the sectarian rivalry, which was the dominant religious conflict in the city.

Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century Rebecca Slayton (bio) Judging Edward Teller: A Closer Look at One of the Most Influential Scientists of the Twentieth Century. By István Hargittai. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010. Pp. 575. $32. Edward Teller has been revered as the father of the hydrogen bomb, a brilliant physicist who helped America win the cold war. He has also been reviled as the man who crucified J. Robert Oppenheimer and spurred a costly race for ever more destructive and dangerous nuclear weapons. In Judging Edward Teller, Istvan Hargittai weighs these diverse judgments into the most synthetic account of Teller’s life to date, with mixed results. As a fellow Hungarian, scientist, and acquaintance of Teller’s, Hargittai is uniquely positioned to shed fresh light on Teller’s life. Using papers from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security Services, Hargittai provides a fascinating and amusing account of failed efforts to enlist first Teller, and then his sister, in communist espionage. Hargittai also makes good use of the Teller papers in the Hoover Library at Stanford. However, much of the book relies heavily on some problematic secondary sources, and especially scientists’ memoirs, while neglecting a large body of historical scholarship surrounding Teller. Reliance on two particularly suspect sources—an outdated hagiography by Stanley Blumberg and Gwinn Owens (1976), and Teller’s own 2001 Memoirs—leads the book to repeat well-known errors. Hargittai’s use of Memoirs is odd, because he thoughtfully discusses Teller’s early-developed tendency of revising history and coping with difficulty by “denial” (p. 85). Hargittai also judges conflicting secondary sources, noting, for example, mistakes in Peter Goodchild’s 2004 biography (p. 235). But these discussions reveal little that is new. Instead, the book’s primary contribution is synthetic—it improves on two problematic biographies of Teller primarily because it is the first to depict the fullness of Teller’s life, not only as a controversial political figure, but also as a scientist. Hargittai’s narrative follows three “exiles” (Teller’s word). First, the rise of communism and anti-Semitism in 1920s Hungary encouraged Teller and other rising Jewish scientists in Budapest to study in Germany. The rise of the Nazis in Germany uprooted Teller again in 1933, and he eventually landed at George Washington University, as a full professor in physics. In describing these first two “exiles,” Hargittai usefully captures several of Teller’s scientific collaborations and achievements in lay terms. Teller was a scientific “digger, not a driller” (p. 104)—that is, a scientist who engages many different questions, rather than focusing on one. Teller’s digging eventually led him to nuclear physics and the Manhattan Project, where he became fascinated with the prospect of developing a fusion bomb—but was forced to focus instead on the simpler fission weapon. Teller’s third “exile” was the result of his testimony against Robert [End Page 509] Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project and icon of physics, in the loyalty-security hearings of 1954. Though many painted Oppenheimer as angel and Teller as devil, Hargittai judges Teller more favorably. Oppenheimer privately betrayed friends, whereas Teller proved loyal to a fault. Nonetheless, Hargittai acknowledges that Teller’s testimony was designed to carry strong negative weight—a fact that made him a pariah among many scientists. Whereas Teller’s first two exiles nurtured his scientific collaborations, this third exile undermined his scientific research. Teller instead became a public and political “monomaniac with many manias,” advocating aggressive nuclear weapons development at every turn. Several chapters chronicle Teller’s political campaigns, such as his opposition to limits on nuclear testing, and his advocacy of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or “Star Wars” missile defense program). Unfortunately these chapters reveal little new, and a tendency to rely on scientists’ memoirs, rather than more comprehensive historical work, sometimes skews the account of these political debates. For example, Hargittai describes SDI as a “policy” (p. 403) and highlights Teller’s approach—the X-ray laser. But as a tangible research and development program, SDI redirected work on a far broader range...

Introduction: Contesting China’s New “National” Music

Introduction: Contesting China’s New “National” Music Joshua H. Howard Despite widespread recognition that music both constitutes and reflects culture, the study of Chinese music and its development has been marginalized from mainstream topics of historical inquiry. In most English-language Chinese history textbooks, for instance, the subject of music in twentieth-century China is conspicuous only by its absence. Twentieth-Century China seeks to redress this historiographical lacuna by devoting a special issue to music, especially the development of “New Music,” defined by one of its leading scholars as, “music composed by Chinese using European compositional techniques and musical idioms.”1 Given that the new music was largely a product of semi-colonial, cosmopolitan Shanghai, it is appropriate that all four articles consider musicians and musical developments in Shanghai, where Chinese-foreign interaction and experimentation in modern art forms were most visible and audible. Each author examines how members of China’s music community struggled for national transformation in a highly contested process of defining the new “national” music, whether that meant defending elements of pre-existing Chinese music, adopting European stylistic elements, composing Chinese-Western fusion works, or creating a socialist realist style directed towards a new mass audience. In “The Shanghai Conservatory, Chinese Musical Life, and the Russian Diaspora, 1927–1949,” Hon-Lun Yang brings to life a forgotten chapter in the development of China’s “new music.” Although Russian pedagogues constituted almost half of all full-time faculty at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and influenced an entire generation of Chinese musicians that came to the fore during the Maoist era, such as composer He Luting, pianist Ding Shande, and conductor Li Delun, the question of how Western musicians, and Russian musicians in particular, contributed to the development of Chinese music was largely avoided during the Maoist era for its sensitive political implications. Yang suggests that Russian musicians, because of their own marginalized status in Shanghai’s expatriate community, may have been uniquely positioned to influence their Chinese counterparts. Yang’s use of memoirs reveals that Chinese graduates from the Shanghai Conservatory remember a time of intense musical exchange with their Russian teachers, during which a transculturation of the nation’s musical practices occurred that facilitated China’s musical modernity. John Winzenburg’s “Aaron Avshalomov and New Chinese Music in Shanghai, 1931–1947” reveals how this Russian-Jewish immigrant’s hybrid identity as a [End Page 2] Chinese acculturated foreigner facilitated his experimental work as conductor, composer, and pedagogue that defied rigid traditional-modern, Chinese-Western dichotomies and contributed to the development of a new “national” Chinese music. Analyzing Avshalomov’s compositional style and influence on musicians, the author demonstrates how Avshalomov inspired burgeoning composers to experiment with Chinese stylistic elements while using Western musical techniques. Moreover, Avshalomov’s compositions have contemporary relevance as they have foreshadowed an important genre of Chinese-Western fusion compositions during the ongoing reform era. Contestation over participation in China’s musical modernity is the subject of Joys Cheung’s article, “Divide and Connections in Chinese Musical Modernity: Cases of Musical Networks Emerging in Colonial Shanghai, 1919–1937.” Cheung argues that previous interpretations of Chinese musical modernity have privileged the reform-oriented Shanghai Conservatory over the nativist Great Unity Music Society. Whereas the former advocated Western classical music as the foundation for a new Chinese music, the latter sought to defend preexisting Chinese music practices while incorporating them into modern developments. By the early 1930s these two organizations had developed an antagonistic relationship with each other. Prominent reformers, for instance, criticized Chinese musical instruments for being technologically obsolete and lacking expressive power. Perhaps as a consequence of accepting these criticisms at face value, musicologists have often treated the Great Unity Music Society as peripheral to China’s musical modernity, or, at best, an organization “on the verge” of musical modernity. By contrast, Cheung reveals that musicians from the two organizations overlapped in significant ways. Employing the concept of “weak ties,” derived from social network theory, Cheung argues that the two organizations shared a commitment to the nation-building project and that both “reformers” and “defenders” “embraced a greater openness to a bi-musical—albeit loosely defined—approach in pursuing Chinese modernity...

Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory (review)

Reviewed by: Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory David Jortner Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory. By Christopher Bigsby. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; pp. vii + 407. $38.00 cloth. In the first chapter of his book Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust, Christopher Bigsby lays out his thesis: "This book . . . is a meditation on memory, on the ways in which memory has operated in the work of writers for whom the Holocaust was a defining event. But it is also an exploration of the ways in which fiction and drama have attempted to approach a subject so resistant to the imagination" (4). While this gives the reader a good sense of the structure of the book, Bigsby's statement also underscores the difficulty in reviewing this text for Theatre Journal. As a work of scholarship on Holocaust, memory, and narrative, his work is exemplary; he profiles nine of the most prominent Holocaust writers, all linked through their use or exploration of memory, and examines the biographical and sociocultural connections in their work. From the point of view of theatre scholarship, however, the book is somewhat disappointing. While Bigsby includes several playwrights among his subjects (including Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Weiss, Arthur Miller, and Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, who dramatized Anne Frank), he fails to develop fully the idea of theatre as a repository for memory and the challenges this presents. In order to do this book justice, therefore, I feel compelled to write this review in two parts, first from the standpoint of a scholar interested in memory theory and Holocaust studies, and second as a theatre historian. Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust is an excellent work of scholarship in the field of Holocaust literature. Bigsby begins with a discussion about the simultaneous importance and unreliability of memory as a form of witness; this is a theme he will return to in examining respective authors' works throughout the book. He then includes chapters and analyses of major Holocaust writers who explore ideas of memory/testimony in their work; these include W. G. Sebald, Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Weiss, Arthur Miller, Anne Frank, Jean Améry, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski. He follows these sections with a fascinating chapter titled "Memory Theft," which examines the writings of several well-known Holocaust impersonators—authors who falsely claimed to have survived the Holocaust—and illustrates how their works were originally embraced. One of the strengths of the book is the number and variety of authors Bigsby chooses to study. He analyzes the use of memoir, documentary, and memory in works as diverse as Weiss's The Investigation, and Wiesel's Night, and the mnemonic stylization in the novels of Sebald. In addition, Bigsby's subjects span a range of nationalities and Holocaust voices, including those who had been interned in the camps, both Jews and non-Jews, as well as postwar German and American writers (again, some Jewish, some not) who felt compelled to address the issue. Bigsby's new-historicist approach accentuates the differing voices of each writer; it is fascinating to see how, for example, in the work of Sebald, a German gentile whose father served in the army under the Nazis, the desire for "restitution" surfaces in the actions and memories of fictional (yet autobiographical) characters. Bigsby also does the reader a tremendous service by demonstrating how these authors' texts and memories interact with one another. Undoubtedly, some of the controversies and dialogues will be well-known to Holocaust scholars and historians (such as Cynthia Ozick on the "ownership" of Anne Frank). However, presenting Sebald's comments on Weiss (much of the book uses Sebald's scholarship as a launching point) as well as the dialogue among the works of authors such as Levi, Améry, and Wiesel allows Bigsby to address the difficult nature of memory and history. As a scholar of Holocaust literature, I find Bigsby's book an invaluable resource. However, as a work of theatre scholarship, Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust has a narrow appeal. As mentioned above, Bigsby does spend a significant amount of time on playwrights. The sections on Hochhuth and Weiss deal with the one...

“Knowing Our Place and Time”: Memoir as Pedagogy

This article gives a perspective on the use of memoir writing as pedagogy in three undergraduate courses at the University of Minnesota in 2002, 2005, and 2006. Each of these courses explored the significance of place and time in the lives of the students. In each, the students wrote memoirs ranging from about 1500 to 5000 words in length. Selected quotations from student evaluative reflections, as well as excerpts from representative student memoirs, help to consider the educational merits of memoir writing in university-level courses. Memoir serves as a way to encourage students to bring their experiences into classes and also helps them to develop important personal reflection skills as they look for deeper meanings from their life stories. One of the most important outcomes of using memoir as pedagogy is the impetus it gives for students to examine and reflect upon aspects of their busy lives. Although some students in these courses found memoir writing awkward at first, all considered the experience to be very worthwhile, both for their current understanding and future development. One student noted that reflecting on her life through writing a memoir ...has not only given me insight on my past, but on my future. This article concludes with an exhortation to also use memoir writing as pedagogy in other kinds of courses, including professionally oriented ones. Some suggestions about how this might be accomplished are offered.

Um olhar antropológico sobre fatos e memórias da imigração italiana

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar de que forma os migrantes italianos que se dirigiram para a região central do estado do Rio Grande do Sul em finais do século XIX conduziram a colonização local e quais as categorias sociais presentes nesse processo. Utilizarei como fonte as memórias escritas por dois imigrantes: Julio Lorenzoni (publicadas em 1975) e Andrea Pozzobon (publicadas em 1997), bem como o Álbum do Primeiro cinqüentenário da imigração italiana no estado, escrito em italiano e impresso em 1925. Efetuar uma análise antropológica das narrativas documentais dessa imigração é algo extremamente fértil para se compreender, também, a dinâmica contemporânea das reivindicações étnicas em nível local, que se sustentam na construção de uma origem baseada na ancestralidade italiana.

19: Making Meaning of a Life in Teaching: A Memoir-Writing Project for Seasoned Faculty

The University of Minnesota's faculty development project, “Making Meaning of a Life in Teaching,” promotes collegiality and enhances self-reflection for those who are experienced classroom instructors. Started in October 2003, this project provides a forum that invites participants to examine specific memories from their teaching lives and to transform those recollections into a written memoir. This chapter explores the use of memoir as an effective tool for faculty development, describes the project's structure and components, and presents both co-facilitator and participant perspectives on the process and the memoir product.

Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War by James M. s> Goldgeier Michael McFaul (review)

152 SEER, 83, I, 2005 intrigued by some of the questions the author did not pose, the answers to which westilldonotknow. University ofBradford G. BATONYI Goldgeier, James M. and McFaul, Michael. Powerand Purpose.U.S. Policy Toward Russia AftertheColdWar.BrookingsInstitutionPress,Washington, D.C., 2003. viii + 467 pp. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Index. $19.95: ?14.50 (paperback). THIS Brookings Institution study provides a thorough analytical account of US policy towardsRussia in the eventful decade between the abortive Soviet coup in August I99I and iI September 200I. The authorshave had access to most of the American policymakersinvolved as well as severalin Russia and othercountries,and have conductednearlya hundredinterviewsin all.These, togetherwith the use of memoirs and contemporarypublications,must make this account aswell-basedas any can be before the opening of the archives. As political scientists, the authors are interested in the wider, and more theoretical, implications of their study. The analysis is structuredaround a distinction between what they see as 'two deep traditions in the making of American foreign policy' (p. 5) a 'realist'concern with the distributionof power between states and a 'Wilsonian'belief that American securityis best achieved through the universalization of liberal values. This difference in worldviewsis important,it is argued,because 'ideasdo matter'in the making of American foreign policy: 'structuralor systemic factors be they the balance of power or internationalinstitutions are least constrainingforthe mostpowerfulstatein the system'(p. 8). In thiscontext, too, individual'policy entrepreneurs'(p. 8) can have a keyinfluence.Thus, Secretaryof StateJames Bakerwas crucial in the adoption and effectiveimplementation of the policy of removingnuclearweapons fromthe Ukraine, Belarusand Kazakhstan. Baker's concern with Realpolitik security issues is seen as typical of the George H. W. Bush administration with its concentration on reaching disarmament agreements with Gorbachev and relative indifference to the issue of democratization. Even when the August I99I coup seemed to be successful,Bush made it clear this would not check the START I treaty. By contrast, the Clinton administration, and particularly Strobe Talbott, who had effectivecontrolof Russianpolicy formost of the time, sawthe promotion of democracy in Russia as the main priority.The pendulum swungback with George W. Bush, for whom Condoleeza Rice insistedthat 'U.S. policy must concentrate on the importantsecurityagendawith Russia'(p. 309). The authorsadmitthatthisneatpatternistoo simpleand that allPresidents have to pay attention to both the balance of power and liberalvalues, a point amplydemonstratedin thenarrative.Similarly,astheyalsoshow,both 'power balancers' and 'regime transformers' can differ among themselves as 'realists'did over the desirabilityof Ukraine's having nuclear weapons and 'Wilsonians' over NATO enlargement. But in stressing the fundamental character of the ideological divide, Goldgeier and McFaul follow many historiansof American foreign policy. It is clear where their own sympathies REVIEWS 153 lie. They are criticalof the failureof the United Statesto do more to promote democracy and economic reform, particularly in I99I-92. The fact that acrimony over such issuesas NATO enlargement or Kosovo did not resultin a return to the Cold War is taken to show that 'historyhas vindicated those Wilsonians in all three U.S. administrations who believed that Russian transformationwas a U.S. securityinterest'(p. 365). 'Realists' might respond that Moscow's acquiescent attitude reflected consciousness of its weakness. The authors themselves remark on the 'breathtakingspeed' of Russia's decline as a major power (p. 359); where Khrushchev once dreamt of overtakingthe West, Putin now aspiresto catch up with Portugal.As ispointed out, therewas a lag inWashington'sperception of this, and in his firstterm Clinton had no higherforeignpolicy prioritythan the support of El'tsin. But later in the decade Russia received much less attention, and lessconsiderationwas given to thewishesof itsleaders.In other respects,too, the storytold here seems to vindicate a 'realist'perspective.The valuable statistics(and tables) on aid not only show how small the American effortwas in comparisonto that of Europe (especiallyGermany)but also how much more aid was provided for securitypurposes (thedismantlingof Soviet nuclear and chemical weapons) than for economic assistance or democracy promotion. This reflected the prioritiesof Congress, which of course has to appropriatethe funds. Whatever latitude of choice the United States enjoys with respect to its external environment, there are significant internal constraintson policymakers'ability to chart the nation's course. In this case, the influence of domestic...

“An Imperishable Attitude”: A Memoir of Learning and Teaching

Reflecting on past experiences is an important problem-solving technique when teachers face new situations. In fact, teachers’ attitudes and practices are highly influenced by their prior experiences as both learners and teachers. This paper is based on the premise that growth as an effective teacher is enhanced when one reflects more deeply about what one believes about teaching and learning—and why. It considers the use of memoir writing to gain insight about how one’s values, attitudes, and perspectives about teaching and learning are “formed.” A memoir is defined as a combination of story telling and essay writing, both narrative and reflective. During the 2003–2004 academic year, the author led a “writing community” at the University of Minnesota that helped participating faculty write their “memoirs of teaching.” These memoirs focused on periods in which the faculty members’ values, attitudes, and perspectives about teaching and learning had been especially influenced. In addition to co-leading this community of “memoirists,” the author also participated in writing his own memoir of teaching. This paper presents that memoir.

The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991 by Roger R. s> Reese (review)

REVIEWS 567 Lack of emphasis on 'congiuntura' leads to a one-sided account which cannot make sense of the ideologies discussed.One solution would have been to study the way that individuals' ideological outlooks changed over the period, but this too is ignored. A further omission is the international perspective.Nothing that took place in the Russian economy or society could be understood in isolation from the revolution's encirclement by hostile capitalistforces and the desperatehope for, and need of, foreign socialistaid. Yet this is what Salomoni does. In the mid-I920s Trotsky(who is overlooked in this book) famously criticized Bukharin for abstracting the Russian revolution from its internationalcontext, pointing out that if you do this 'you could walknakedthroughRed Squareon ChristmasDay'. Another gap is the minimalattentionpaid to thepeasantrywho, as noted in passing, formed 8o per cent of the population. The key political question of government relationswith the various strata poor, middle and rich -was fundamental to any economic policy. Finally, the civil war itself, is barely discussed. War communism came about as the beleaguered Soviet state marshalled its paltry economic forces in a struggleagainst powerful internal and externalenemies. It disappearedshortlyafterthe civilwar ended. Yetthis conjunctionis never explored. Salomini's research is wide-ranging and her objective presentation of the various ideological argumentsimpressive.Therefore, this book can be useful if it is combined with other works that give a sense of the unbelievably dire circumstancesin which the drama(ortragedy)of war communismwas played out. Edinburgh D. GLUCKSTEIN Reese, Roger R. The SovietMilitaryExperience. A Histogyof theSovietArmy, I9I7-I99I. Warfareand History.Routledge,LondonandNew York, 2000. Xii + 207 pp. Notes. Map. Bibliography. Index. fI2.99 (paperback). THIs book provides a very useful overview of the development of the armed forces throughoutthe Soviet period. By examining the entireperiod I9I7-91 Roger Reese is able to highlighttrendsand identifykey themes which played a significant role in shaping the Soviet military. In his introduction to the book, Reese draws attention to three such themes: continuity versus change (both in comparing the Red Army with its Tsarist predecessor and in consideringdifferentpoints in the Soviet period);idealismversuspragmatism; and the armedforcesas a school of social transformation. From the very beginning the Bolsheviks were caught between their principlesand the harshrealitiesof the time. The party'sidealsrequireda new type of army, manned by committed and politically-awarevolunteers from the working class and organized according to democratic principles, but the pressing need to defend the new regime from its opponents meant the hasty re-employment of many of the practices and the officers of the Imperial army. One of the strengthsof this book is its rich discussionsof the problems of creating an effective armed force in the early years of Soviet power. The 568 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 detailed examination of this period demonstratesvery clearly the difficulties which the Bolshevikshad in creating an army out of a peasant society with little interestin the Bolshevikcause and strongreasons actively to oppose the new government. Reese makes good use of memoirs to illustrate the unpromising material with which the Bolshevikshad to work and to convey the chaos which characterizedthistime. This book's depiction of the constant and often unsuccessful struggle by the regime to ensure that its soldiers and officers were adequately fed, trained, equipped and housed is a valuable reminder that poor living conditions, inadequate training, and low morale are not simply products of the period since the collapse of the USSR but were features of the Soviet armed forces throughout the twentieth century. Indeed, one is struckbyjust how often the leaders of the Soviet armed forces had to face and overcome obstaclesso seriousthat they threatenedthe institution'sabilityto function. Reese makes extensive use of Russian sources, including documents from the Russian State Military Archives as well as published sources, and effectively challenges a number of widely-held views about the development of the Soviet armed forces. For example, he questions the severity of the impact of the I937 army purge on the Soviet Union's initial response to the Nazi invasionofJune I94I, arguingthatthescaleofthe arrests,imprisonments and executions of the officer corps was not as great as widely believed and cannot alone account for the Soviets' disastrous performance in the early campaigns of I94I-42. Instead, Reese draws...

Turning Japanese/returning to America: Problems of gender, class, and nation in David Mura's use of memoir

Turning Japanese/returning to America: Problems of gender, class, and nation in David Mura's use of memoir