Use Of Personal Narratives Research Articles

Finding Mother, Finding Ourselves: An Essay Inspired by Vissing’s “The Impact of Negation of the Maternal Body”

This paper places maternal subjectivity in an embodied, intersubjective context through the use of personal narrative. In response to the work of Helena Vissing (this issue), who lodges a critique of how psychoanalysis has negated aspects of maternal experience, it both extends and challenges her ideas, reacting to the disembodied nature of her critique and relocating it into the realm of an autobiographical story. It also problematizes cis-heteronormative biases in scholarship around maternal subjectivity through the inclusion of queer experience and queer family configurations in the narrative.

Feminist Theory

Abstract As an overview to this year’s works in feminist theory, this chapter focuses on the use of personal narrative in feminist writing published in 2023. Overall, I contend that five overlapping motivations give way to contemporary feminist autotheory: first, a sustained interest in addressing the structures of feelings or affects that subtend and give shape to everyday life; next, an exhaustion with and suspicion of both empiricism and poststructuralism; still more, an interest in using writing and scholarship to promote healing or practice care; in addition, an insistence on complexity and particularity and the refusal of generalization; and, finally, a reparative turn towards mothers, especially Black and Brown mothers. The review begins by briefly contextualizing the works in relation to autotheory. The remainder is divided into three sections: 1. Affect, the Everyday, and the Black and Brown Maternal, which considers Moon Charania’s Archive of Tongues and Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes; 2. Beyond Positivistic Empiricism, which turns to Carol Ulises Decena’s Circuits of the Sacred and Ed Cohen’s On Learning to Heal; 3. Attending to Pain and Loss, which reflects on Ayu Saraswati’s Scarred and Megan Sweeney’s Mendings. It ends with a brief conclusion considering autotheory in the university classroom.

COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL- AND CASE-BASED METHOD FOR LEARNING PHYSIOLOGY AMONG 1ST YEAR MBBS STUDENTS

Objective: The medical science of physiology is both basic and applied. Traditional physiology instruction is teacher-centered, with little involvement from the students. A self-directed learning strategy focused on training through the use of personal narratives is known as case-based learning (CBL). The present study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of CBL method in teaching physiology among 1st year MBBS students. Methods: This study was conducted among 1st year MBBS students of 2022–2023 batch. The study design included a pre-test, a CBL discussion on a specific topic, and a post-test following the CBL session. MS Excel and SPSS version 23 were used to gather, tabulate, and statistically analyze the data. Results from the pre-and post-tests were compared using the student’s “t” test, and p<0.05 was regarded as statistically significant. The 12 questions that made up the feedback survey were all expressed as percentages. Results: When pre-and post-test results were compared, the post-test score after the CBL session was significantly better than the pre-test score of the session. The majority of students supported CBL activities. In student feedback, more than 95% of the students thought CBL classes helped interaction among them. More than 94% of the students thought CBL classes helped in clearing doubts, helped in increasing interest. More than 91% of the students thought CBL classes improved conceptual thinking. Conclusion: Through active learning, CBL can be utilized as an addition to lectures to augment standard teaching/learning approaches. It encourages the drive to learn and the development of clinical reasoning

The ‘Confessional’ Voice in Food Journalism: Decentring Narratives in the Whetstone Radio Collective

This article discusses the use of personal narratives in food media and journalism with a particular focus on podcasting. It situates the research amongst the abundance of lived experiences both in food content and in podcasting, two spaces that have been regarded as providers of the intimacy required to challenge impartiality practices in journalism. Given that the growth of podcasting has arguably failedto include enough non-mainstream voices, our primary research is based on four series of the Whetstone Radio Collective, a media organisation that aims to tell the stories of marginalised communities. Using content and thematic analysis, it establishes that the innovative use of first-person narratives of the hosts—who are overwhelming people of colour and embody stories of migration and displacement that mirror the food stories—is accompanied by conventional journalistic sourcing of experts who are already established voices based in the Global North. A recentring agenda is most obvious when it reclaims histories such as that of black farmers in the US, when it situates the consumption of foods as part of the global trade that drove the colonial project, or when it delves into and criticises foodways such as the social architecture of kitchens.

Autoethnography as a research method in happiness studies

The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal that has been studied by philosophers, theologians, and scientists for centuries. Despite its universal importance, the definition and means of achieving happiness vary greatly across cultures and individual experiences (Uchida, Norasakkunkit and Kitayama, 2004). Cultures have different beliefs, values, and customs that shape their understanding of happiness. For example, some cultures may place a higher value on material wealth and success, while others may prioritize spiritual fulfilment or strong relationships (Joshanloo and Weijers, 2014). In this autoethnographic paper, I reflect on my own personal journey towards happiness during a one-year travel across 22 countries within southern Africa, southeast Asia, and south America, focusing on the first part of the trip – southern Africa. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that involves the researcher reflecting on their personal experiences and cultural positionality in order to understand and analyse cultural phenomena (Bunyan, 2021). It combines elements of autobiography and ethnography, as the researcher uses their own experiences as a way to explore and understand the cultural context in which they participate (Hamilton, Smith and Worthington, 2008). Through the use of personal narrative and cultural analysis, I delve into the ways in which my own cultural background and societal expectations shaped my understanding of happiness. I also explore the ways in which immersing myself in a new culture and community impacted my pursuit of happiness and well-being. By reflecting on my own experiences and observations, I aim to shed light on the complexities of the pursuit of happiness and the potential for personal and cultural growth that can result from stepping outside of one's comfort zone. Through this autoethnographic lens, we hope to offer a unique and personal perspective on the pursuit of happiness, and to encourage readers to consider the cultural and individual factors that influence their own pursuit of this universal goal. We also reflect on how innovation and technology, essential to business, may not be as important to achieve happiness in certain contexts. This essay is a call for reflection on what truly matters in life.

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

The Power of the “Knowing Women”

Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy, by Emma Griffin

Reviewed by: Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy by Emma Griffin Sarah Winter (bio) Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy, by Emma Griffin; pp. v + 389. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020, $35.00, £20.00. Emma Griffin's Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy tracks the impact of the male breadwinner wage on the economic and emotional lives of Victorian and Edwardian British working-class families through a multifaceted analysis of 662 working-class autobiographies (443 written by men, and the rest by women), some published but many existing exclusively in archives or as recorded interviews. Griffin notes that the proportion of male and female autobiographers evened out among those born after 1890 (9–10). Revising her account of the Industrial Revolution's positive effects on male workers' personal freedom and economic opportunity in Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution (2013) through a focus on gender inequality, Bread Winner also expands Griffin's research on autobiographies to understand working-class Britons' economic lives in ways that quantitative methods cannot fully capture. She observes that, while working-class autobiographies have been intensively studied, they have not been used "to understand 'big' problems like the extent and meaning of economic growth" in the nineteenth century, or why this growth failed to eliminate widespread poverty (296). Griffin interprets the male breadwinner wage—"a bargaining concept that was successfully deployed by several campaigners and trade unions throughout the [nineteenth] century" (4)—as an ideology that disqualified women from entering the labor market; as a gendered structural element of the economy; and as a narrative scaffolding for working-class writers to organize their retrospective stories and assess the financial successes or struggles of their families (229). Bread Winner is constructive for its use of personal narratives as historical evidence that can generate new interdisciplinary methods of interpretation in economic history. The book's chapters study the structural effects of the breadwinner wage through a range of topics derived through close analysis of the autobiographies, including women's and girls' lifelong "drudgery" at housework and their restricted opportunities for employment outside the home due to lack of skills (86); the reinforcement of masculinity, agency, and financial independence gained by men and boys through work; the resulting family dynamics in which a working boy contributing income was "somebody" (82), while girls were "nobodies" (83); hunger and the distribution of food within the household by gender and work status, and in urban and industrial versus rural areas; autobiographers' judgments of their fathers as breadwinners and their mothers as caregivers and household managers; writers' reflections on their family's emotional life; changes over time in the autobiographical format and in writers' attitudes toward gender and self-expression; and men's growing access to political participation and citizenship versus women's mostly muted public lives. By extrapolating from her sources, Griffin shows how rising male wages in urban, industrialized areas limited wage growth for women, thus intensifying the economic gender inequality produced by the breadwinner model. These developments made women dependent on a male wage and reinforced a domestic power dynamic that maintained their social subordination. Griffin also adopts as an analytical tool the autobiographers' own benchmark of provision, used to evaluate their fathers as successful or inadequate breadwinners (110). [End Page 528] She highlights that almost half of the autobiographers' families lacked a reliable breadwinner (153). As many recounted, when fathers abandoned the family, became ill or disabled by work, or succumbed to alcoholism, mothers or wives who entered the workforce were often unable to earn a living wage and were still responsible for housework and childcare. The wage differential facilitated by the male breadwinner model also served as a gendered "form of control" within the family. For girls who hoped to attain secondary schooling but were retained by their parents at home to help with housework, "low female wages were thus an important structural element of society, playing a vital role in ensuring that all families had access to the unpaid domestic work that they required in order to function" (58). The autobiographies also provide Griffin with convincing evidence for a...

Sharing Stories of Mothering, Academia and the COVID 19 Pandemic: Multiple Roles, Messiness and Family Wellbeing

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused disruption. Responsibilities increased especially for people who identify as mothers needing to balance work and caring for their child(ren). Through the use of personal narratives, we explored our experiences as mothers who work in academia. The purpose of this commentary is to explore the commonalities of our experiences of trying to maintain the multiple roles and responsibilities demanded from us as mothers and academics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two themes emerged: multiple roles and responsibilities and embracing the ‘messiness’. The need to take on multiple roles simultaneously such as working from home and parenting was challenging. Embracing the ‘messiness’ demonstrated that caring for our children while working from home caused their needs and our time to focus on them to be compromised. Our work and productivity were impacted with minimal available support but this was not acknowledged within the business as usual practices of the university. The conditions that negatively impact us, also negatively impact our children. Children have needed to adjust to pandemic conditions and their support has been compromised due to the other competing demands mothers face. As academics, our future work will be informed and shaped from this experience, and so too will the growth and development of our children. Our experiences from this pandemic highlight the gendered inequities present within academia and the potential negative effects on child well-being. We call attention to this issue to help promote change and advocate for mothers working in academia and elsewhere.

What Du Bois and I Know About Dignity of Risk.

This article uses multiple interwoven personal narratives to explicate the relationships among several concepts crucial to bioethics brought into focus by Robert Perske's 1972 article on "The Dignity of Risk," including dignity, risk, paradox, disability, autonomy, uncertainty, diagnosis, and prognosis. The use of personal narrative as a form of evidence and a knowledge-making method allows for the exploration of the meaning-making work of language and story and the introduction of humanities and social science concepts such as stigma management and dignity maintenance into Perske's concept of the dignity of risk. The personal narratives the article draws include Mark, a character in Perske's article; W. E. B. Du Bois; Frantz Fanon; and myself. Finally, the article calls for humility in medical science's predictive narratives for all patients, but particularly for people with disabilities.

A New Sensibility towards Unfinished Ruins: Affective Knowledge Translation through Experimental Video

In the last 50 years, and due to a dilapidation of funds, hundreds of public works have remained unfinished in Italy, most especially in Sicily. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video declared these modern ruins a formal architectural style—so-called Incompiuto Siciliano— through which they aim to change the buildings’ negative perception, turning it into something positive. In September 2015, I carried out an urban exploration journey during which I visited a dozen Incompiuto Siciliano works all across Sicily in one week. Based on that journey, this paper argues that a renewed sensibility towards incompletion necessarily requires original and creative methods to translate the affective knowledge gained in these sites. Therefore, through the use of personal narratives and the creation of three different experimental videos, the aim is to advance the way we translate embodied encounters with these spaces. This is relevant not only in the context of modern ruins but in further unruly spaces where aesthetic experiences emerge.

Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity

Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity

Transformative Learning in Theory and Practice

This is a response to “The Ethical Knower: Rethinking Our Pedagogy in the Age of Trump” by Elana Michelson. We appreciate Michelson’s critical evaluation of the appropriateness of transformative learning and the use of personal narrative, as well as the frames and tools she offers to help us deal with current challenges such as “epistemological chaos” in the “age of Trump.” Michelson’s distinction between epistemological and hermeneutic analysis, as well as her conception of meaning perspectives as social/cultural foundations of identity, are helpful insights. The educational practices she finds disturbing are indeed ineffective approaches to teaching, and we are inspired by her invitation directed to “us as a community to struggle toward a more honest assessment of how our field might better respond to the phenomena that led to the age of Trump.” In this response, we talk further about some points made in Michelson’s article, elaborating on several issues and offering alternative perspectives that we believe may be productive paths forward. We do this in three parts, by (a) engaging in a critique of some of Michelson’s statements and positions, (b) elaborating on the conceptions of transformative learning in practice, and (c) expanding on the discussion of epistemological and hermeneutic analysis.

"Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Philadelphia"

Reviewed by: "Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Philadelphia" Jessica Martucci "Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Philadelphia," parade and exhibit. http://muttermuseum.org/exhibitions/going-viral-behindthe-scenes-at-a-medical-museum/ On September 28, 1918, two hundred thousand Philadelphians turned out to watch a parade and buy savings bonds in support of the United States war effort. Gathered in the crowd that day were nurses, industrial workers, military personnel, seamstresses, and homemakers, but an unknown trespasser also lurked among parade-goers—influenza H1N1. Within six weeks, fourteen thousand people in the city had died in the world's deadliest pandemic to date. A special exhibit at the Mütter Museum, which began in the fall of 2019, invites visitors to learn what it was like to live in Philadelphia at the height of the outbreak. Their programming and exhibition endeavor to link visitors to the past through emotional connections forged through art and the clever use of personal narratives. In partnership with Blast Theory, a UK-based artist group known for its large, innovative, interactive public art works, the Mütter Museum kicked off their [End Page 129] influenza programming with a memorial parade 101 years after the original took place (https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/spit-spreads-death/). The registration process for the parade invited participants to choose the name of an influenza victim to honor and remember. When the day of the event arrived, registrants received large white posters printed with their person's name and death certificate. Encouraged to arrive well in advance of the parade's start time, participants milled around, studying their death certificates and chatting with one another about these long-since forgotten flu victims. I marched in memory of Effie D. Baltian, a student nurse at Philadelphia General Hospital. She died where she had worked just a few days prior, taking care of flu patients. She was 23 years old. Click for larger view View full resolution When the memorial parade began, music, composed especially for the event, struck an eerie and somber tone as prerecorded singers solemnly chanted the names of the dead. Participants played the music for the parade on their cell [End Page 130] phones, creating a surround-sound effect throughout the march. At the parade front, a large and illuminated, white rectangular box pushed its way up Broad Street, carving a path through the heart of Center City. Behind it marched the participants, carrying the names of the dead. Every minute or so, a parade organizer would select a participant from the front and ask them to stand still while two additional glowing boxes passed by them on either side. When my turn came, I stood still and watched the lighted tunnel slip past me. I saw the backs of the "living" walking away from me. My peripheral vision obscured by the glowing boxes, I felt a fleeting moment of fear, isolation, and loneliness before slipping into the noisy crowd of my "dead" companions. Suddenly, one could imagine what it must have been like to see your neighbors and family members getting sick, to wonder if you would be next. The parade created a space where the anxiety and fear from the past felt momentarily palpable again. At the end of the route, the past faded again, giving way to stands set up to dispense contemporary information about the museum and healthcare, including flu shots. The museum exhibit begins with a video of the parade that evoked faint echoes of the participatory experience. Next, visitors encounter the first of several large and beautifully designed museum panels. Following these through the exhibit, one learns about everything from manufacturing during WWI to the reliance on vaccination as a tool of modern public health to the creation and purpose of the Spit Spreads Death parade by Blast Theory. The exhibit displays a relatively small number of objects, including (though not limited to) buttons and stickers handed out during the 1918 parade, a medical specimen of a pneumonia-infected lung, some recreations of pinewood coffins, and never-opened Christmas gifts wrapped by a flu victim. This relative sparseness offers a welcome simplicity...

Is resistance enough? Reflections of identity, politics, and relations in the “in-between” spaces of Indigeneity and settlerhood

This article explores the intersectional identities of Indigenous peoples who may walk the path “in-between” Indigenous and settler nationhood, and the implications that reside in that ethically ambiguous space. Employing the use of personal narrative, poetry,1and decolonizing perspectives, this work positions identity as a politicized construct that continues to surveil Indigenous bodies, marking them as threats to settler advancement. This article asks questions around what it means to be Indigenous in a time of social unrest, when your life is marked by colonial interference but your skin is not; is resisting colonialism enough to create spaces for all Indigenous peoples to thrive?

How did the work impact me? Reflections of the researchers and facilitators of BME success projects

Programme leaders and members of programme teams attended inclusive teaching workshops focused on race equality. After the workshops, programme leaders were interviewed to discuss how they were going to implement inclusive practice enhancements. The core team who facilitated the workshops and conducted the interviews reflected on their experiences of leading change associated with reducing the BME attainment gap. Considering a critical incident which they’d experienced during the workshop or during the interviews, they each wrote personal narratives to explore emotions which the incident had stimulated as well as consideration of how they’d responded at the time and what they could have done differently. The four narratives were considered to identify key themes. Two common themes identified were the stimulation of negative emotions (e.g. anger) and the inability to challenge comments and stereotyping assumptions at the time of the incident. Considering the results in light of literature associated with staff development, the use of personal narrative and leading diversity related change, in addition to autoethnographical thoughts associated with the authors’ own experiences of race, racism and privilege, five recommendations for colleagues involved in race-related staff development were identified.

Personal Narrative: Raising Awareness of Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors in Similarly Aged University Students.

Purpose: As part of a programmatic educational initiative, we developed a personal narrative presentation, embedded with evidence-based data, to raise awareness of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) who have been diagnosed with cancer between the ages of 15 and 39 years among similarly aged university students. The narrative encompassed the cancer care continuum from signs of the disease through survivorship and incorporated psychosocial aspects of the experience. Methods: The presenter, diagnosed with lymphoma at the age of 25 years in 2007, interwove AYA data with her narrative in a series of 26 invited lectures given over 2 academic years, 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Students were asked to provide anonymous open-ended feedback. Six hundred thirteen forms were collected and retrospectively dually coded and analyzed. Results: The majority of students (97%) referenced at least one of the presentation's three objectives: (1) build awareness of the AYA demographic; (2) encourage a personal health care focus; and (3) expand awareness of the far-reaching impact of cancer (i.e., psychological, social, and medical) both during and beyond the treatment phase. Format- and/or content-related suggestions and potential benefits of hearing the narrative also were reported. Conclusion: The use of personal narrative to raise awareness of the AYA cancer experience in an academic setting is both feasible and effective. Students demonstrated a new or enhanced understanding of AYA cancer and its biopsychosocial implications. We provide evidence to inform the design of awareness interventions directed at similarly aged university students.

The Ethical Knower: Rethinking Our Pedagogy in the Age of Trump

This article seeks to begin a conversation about pedagogical responses to the current moment. Specifically, I argue that two of adult learning’s most venerated practices—transformative learning and the use of personal narrative—are insufficiently nuanced to respond effectively to the political divisions and the epistemological chaos represented by the election of Donald Trump. I ask the adult learning community, first, to revisit the role of culture in our systems for making meaning and deepen our understanding of the relationship between personal identity, community membership, and attitudinal change. I then suggest that our focus on attitudinal change encourages us overlook aspects of our students’ lives out of which a more bracing pedagogy might emerge. I make a case for distinguishing between the hermeneutic self-awareness cultivated in transformative learning and attention to e pistemological ethics as a response to “fake news” and “truthiness.” I argue for a move from Mezirow’s notion of critical self-reflection to Dewey’s positing of reflection as the active and careful consideration of truth claims, a form of reflection that Dewey himself saw as foundational to epistemological integrity.

No such thing as bad publicity? A quantitative content analysis of print media representations of primary care out-of-hours services

ObjectiveTo explore how out-of-hours primary healthcare services (OOHS) are represented in UK national newspapers, focusing on content and tone of reporting and the use of personal narratives to frame stories.DesignA...

“There's a disconnect”: The Entrepreneurial Ethics of JAY-Z and Donald Trump

4:44 demonstrates JAY-Z's overt and problematic identification with, and support for, black economic nationalism. As a record of personal financial achievement, the album offers a general model for individual aspiration that highlights and disregards the systemic racial and economic structures JAY-Z overcomes and actively participates in as a hip-hop and financial mogul. In this way, JAY-Z's use of personal narrative, and interest in real estate, aligns with Donald J. Trump's own narrative of individual achievement. The comparison of JAY-Z and Donald J. Trump reveals and complicates the ways in which each inserts their entrepreneurial achievements into a discourse of national and raced-based economic nationalism.

History of Psychiatry “from below”

The concept of writing medical history “from below” - especially introduced by the British historian Roy Porter in 1985 - has since been adopted by scholars and researchers around the world, including the German-speaking countries. Our article reviews both the reception and implementation of this approach in the German-speaking historiography of psychiatry. We analyze the disciplinary genesis of this field of work, present the major research themes and give three examples to illustrate the use of personal narratives, patient files and visual arts. We will then outline a new option to further develop the approach in the sense of a “social history of user experience” drawing on the principles of inclusion and participation.