Although many colleges profess interest in character development, faculty often feel ill equipped to address questions of vocation and purpose in their classes. Life writing--biography and autobiography--is a popular genre outside of the university, but is largely neglected within the academy. The study of life writing provides a natural way to…

Overgeneral autobiographical memory seems to be a stable cognitive marker in depressed adults and may predict persistence of depression. This study investigated whether depressive disorders in children are associated with overgeneral memory. Sixty children (ages 9 to 13 years) participated; 15 were diagnosed with lifetime depressive disorder, 25…

This action research project investigated the effects of negotiating curriculum on the affective attitudes of boys in my Year 8 English class towards studying English at high school. The ensuing unit involved developing autobiographical narratives to create, share and critique the students' life-stories, undertaking learning activities that were…

The event specificity of autobiographical memories refers to the degree to which retold memories include specific details about a unique personal experience from a variety of representational systems supported by different brain areas. This article proposes 2 text measures as indicators of event specificity: (a) a measure of temporal sequence in…

THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 228 AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY PENNSYLVANIANS IS DIRECTED TO STUDENTS, HISTORIANS, LIBRARIANS, AND GENERAL READERS. IT DOES NOT INCLUDE BOOKS PUBLISHED AFTER 1960, FICTIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, DIARIES, JOURNALS, MANUSCRITPTS, OR SHORT SKETCHES IN VOLUMES OF COLLECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY. ENTRIES CONTAIN BRIEF ANNOTATIONS, REFERENCES TO THE…

Outlines the ways that the life history method (a research technique based on autobiographical interviews) has been used in anthropology. Debates among French anthropologists on the method's validity are discussed. A study using life histories to examine the social functions of an Occitan language revival among French peasants is described. (AM)

Lists and annotates seven new adult books of interest to high school readers, including biographical and autobiographical works, fiction, and nonfiction. (GT)

The biographical material in book form, and especially that which exists in journals, is widely dispersed and difficult to locate systematically. Approximately 100 sources of biographical and autobiographical material on women who have contributed significantly to psychology are listed. (Author/BEF)

Discusses how the best of autobiographies about the sick enrich the genre, with references to John Hull's "Touching the Rock," Andre Dubus's "Broken Vessels," Jacquie Gordon's "Give Me One Wish," and Robert Murphy's "The Body Silent," among others. Suggests that the reader's attempt to understand his or her own wounds motivates the reading of…

This hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry of the meaning of choosing to teach explores the experience of the author, her grandmother, her grandmother's cousin, and her great-great aunt. It highlights women's limited career choices, the need to nurture, and the concept of responding to a calling. (SK)

Discusses the recent interest in using narrative in research, examining the scope of the concept of narrative, the generic categories of narrative and discourse, difficulties defining narrative, persistent fallacies in narratological analysis, narrative as discursive reality, the problem of efficacy in narrative conventions and human action, and…

Notes that the minor Romantic poet John Clare commands increasing attention at academic conferences, in essay collections, and on college syllabi. Argues the practices that have kept Clare in view have also rendered him partially inaccessible to students, scholars and general readers. Suggests readers are now in possession of the materials with…

This study is based on 72 children's and young adult books that met the criteria of being about Muslims and published and circulated here in the U.S. They can be divided into the varied genres as 49 contemporary realistic fiction, 6 historical fiction, and 17 autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs. In-depth reading and coding were used to…