Letting the life stories of students or parts of those stories into composition courses not only helps students improve their writing skills, but also helps many of them connect with themselves--who they are, who they are becoming, what they want to become--in ways that enhance their abilities to learn in their own fields. Students who fail to ask…

Students in 4 sections of a college reading and study strategies course at a comprehensive midwestern university (part of a special admission program for low achieving students) completed an open-ended assignment in which they wrote about their memories of learning to read. A free-form analysis sheet was developed to sort out the information in…

Believing that the objective, analytical, and competitive modes have already been overemphasized in educational institutions, many feminist teachers stress the subjective, contextual, and collaborative. Such changes involve not only a commitment of energy and time, but also an important shift in a teacher's perception of what counts as knowledge,…

This paper is based on 10 firsthand accounts of black women who graduated from historically white institutions. Four of the narratives came from autobiographies, those of educators Fanny Jackson and Lena Beatrice Morton, social activist Mary Church Terrell, and political activist and author Angela Davis. Three of the other accounts were taken from…

Author argues that the enhanced affirmation of the self is the deepest achievement made possible for the student of education through the subjective discipline of writing an autobiography. (Author/PG)

An American graduate student recalls how he sloughed off his Spanish-Mexican heritage and then painfully rediscovered his Chicano roots. (Editor)

A discussion of the black autobiography as a unique literary genre, highlighting Gwen Brooks'"Report From Part One," as indicative of such an autobiography which goes beyond customary literary traditions in its conception of the artist as an activist. (EH)

The work of war correspondents involves violence, danger, and drama; and what they endure to get a story is often as interesting as the actual news itself. Anglo-American fiction tends toward an ironic, even cynical, view of combat reporting that serves as a corrective to the notion, fostered in journalists' autobiographies, that war is fun. It…

It was Friday, right before Memorial Day weekend. The Social Science Division was quiet. The author was standing in his office when he realized he had finished his 10th year of teaching a week before. He pondered the milestone for a minute. Like most faculty, he has floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in his office. His favorite shelf sits at the top of…

The letter from an adult woman handicapped by spina bifida myelomeningocele is addressed to an adolescent similarly handicapped and focuses on problems of emotional adjustment and coping with bladder incontinence. (DB)

Beginning in 1936, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote an unprecedented newspaper column that provided readers with a detailed recital of her daily activities. Titled "My Day," the column gave behind-the-scenes glimpses of White House life and served as a platform from which the First Lady could state her personal views. The column was a…

Turning points in the author's career are highlighted. It is suggested that the task faced by both British and American higher education is to assure the development of a comprehensive, diversified, reasonably economical higher educational system in the face of inherent tendencies toward imitation, convergence, and conformity. (LBH)

Discusses in cost/benefit terms an approach to teaching the sociology of religion which involves students in writing their religious autobiographies. Considers the nature of the assignment, level of methodological sophistication, difficulties in grading, and justification of the exercise. Concludes that the biographical approach has wide…

Black autobiographies are playing a major role in linking the black writer to his or her audience in the struggle for personal, political, and cultural independence. Each work is simultaneously a self portrait and a record of black life and culture. (Author/GC)

The author takes an autobiographical look at changes in the discipline of American geography during his career as a professional geographer from 1926-1969. He describes his experiences as a university geography professor at graduate and undergraduate levels, as a researcher, and as editor of "Economic Geography" from 1948-1969. (Author/AV)