Explores the ontological status of autobiography as a literary genre. Defines the limits of what can be considered autobiography. Explores the ways in which autobiographies deal with history and consciousness, and addresses the relationship between autobiography and biography, fiction, and psychoanalysis. (DMM)

Reflects on the connections between narrative and lived experience, focusing particularly on a set of three dyads that suggest a relationship of tension: (1) storing life/storying life; (2) truth/fiction; and (3) collection/selection. (TB)

British historian Max Beloff's "An Historian in the 20th Century: Chapters in Intellectual Autobiography" is discussed and his many interests examined, including his scholarly preoccupation with Great Britain, Russia, and the United States; his approach to the study of history; and his establishment of a university in Britain, funded…

Narrates the experiences that the author encountered growing up in his native South Africa. Maintains the omnipresence of poetry and the need to educate the imagination to see and hear poetry everywhere. Considers ways of salvaging the imagination. (HB)

Contends that Zora Neale Hurston's 1943 autobiography contains two distinct lines of discourse: the surface narrative aimed at the White reader, and a second discourse for the Black reader, often conveyed by suggestion. Careful reexamination of this work is recommended. (DM)

Used guided autobiography to foster reconstruction of past life experiences among 12 older adults in Barcelona, Spain. Found a significant and gradual change in the construing system of those participants in autobiographical group as compared to control group of 10 older adults. Distance of elements self-ideal/self and self-ideal/others…

Argues that, as an elusive genre that defies marked definitions, autobiography offers literature and composition teachers various routes and roots for promoting multiculturalism in the classroom. (SR)

Six ideas for writing autobiographies with elementary school students include: model the writing process to get students started; read examples of autobiographies; brainstorm writing ideas; free-write the first draft; edit and revise; and publish the stories. Suggestions for mini-lessons are included. A student reproducible offers an editing…

The Kiss, is described as a controversial memoir about father-daughter incest that disturbed the cultural silence in a "well heeled" home. The emotional and psychological terrain of the daughter's experience is discussed.

In this paper, we extend our social-cultural developmental model of autobiographical memory development (Nelson & Fivush, 2004) to discuss children's developing understanding of self and other as temporally extended in time. Parent-guided reminiscing about past events that includes discussion, comparison, and negotiation of internal states of self…

Era Bell Thompson's "American Daughter", published in 1946 by the University of Chicago Press, is an autobiographical account of an African American woman who comes of age on the plains of North Dakota in the early twentieth century. It deserves to read and included in Great Plains studies because it recounts one of the rarest of…

"A Man" is an original text created by the author that deals with the struggles that Black men experience when confronted by White privilege. By using autoethnographic analysis, the author critiques the language, ironies, tensions, emotions, and opportunities expressed within "A Man," then extends findings to confront the issues that Black men…

One hundred fifteen undergraduates rated 15 word-cued memories and their 3 most negatively stressful, 3 most positive, and 7 most important events and completed tests of personality and depression. Eighty-nine also recorded involuntary memories online for 1 week. In the first 3-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, comparisons were…

Letras y Arte: Literacy and Art, is a summer course that pairs college students and children from a Latino neighborhood for literacy and art learning. Started five years ago, Letras y Arte provides opportunities in four areas: (1) literacy opportunities that foster distinctive identities and voice; (2) immersion in a broad view of literacy that…

In this paper, we consider how the life story develops through the creation of self-event connections in narrating experiences. We first outline the ways in which such connections have been implied by existing work on the life story, and then consider the varieties of such connections that we see in our own work. That work suggests that self-event…