This paper explores an alternative hypothesis for the vitality of traditional understandings of teaching. Teachers' strength might be attributed less to the context of their transmission than to their continuing potential for translation as not-yet-completed narratives. The data were generated during the course of a project which elicited accounts…

Stories consume lives and lives become stories. A unit of study examines the creation of self in autobiographies and biographies looking closely at how we construct a life from the fragments of human experience and memory. This paper looks briefly at the different theoretical perspectives about biography and autobiography, following closely the…

A dialogue between two writing collaborators reveals the act of collaboration as "empowering, liberating, exhilarating, and almost magical." Community-oriented theories of empowerment suggest collaboration can also be about reclaiming political and personal determinacy because working in pairs or groups can enable writers to encourage…

This paper analyzes the process of tenure using various conceptions of narrative as the interpretive lens for considering the meaning of achieving tenure. It first examines tenure as narrative performance, noting when, where, and in what context tenure is discussed. The paper then looks at tenure through Donald Polkinghorne's (1988) analytical…

An autobiography class at Elizabethtown College (Pennsylvania) used one of its four technique paper assignments to focus on the exploratory essay, since the concept of exploration, simply for the sake of questioning, probing, and testing, has both validity and purpose in a class or assignment focusing on autobiography. First the class brainstormed…

Original stories can provide a wealth of opportunity for forensics competitors. Original storytelling requires the sharing of a personal experience or family narrative that is adaptable to audiences differing in age and education. Community organizations and groups are invited to participate as audience members and vary from round to round.…

Noting that different audiences have constructed widely varying interpretations of the figure and work of Margery Kempe ("The Book of Margery Kempe" dates from the beginning of the 15th century), this paper examines the subversiveness of Margery's rhetoric for medieval audiences and for modern audiences and students. The paper first…

The personal essay does not rely on the straight, even rows of a carefully laid out vegetable garden, on strings pulled tight to connect beginnings to ends. Instead it meanders, pulls from here and there, thinks out loud, asks questions, and proceeds leisurely through disconnections to make connections, as an ever-changing flower garden in which…

This study sought to provide an opportunity for individuals who have passed their 90th birthday to look back over their life and assess the meaning of it all. Subjects (N=4) were located in the community. Five interviews were conducted with each subject at weekly intervals; each interview lasted about an hour and was recorded on audiotape.…

Literary accounts help society gain a better understanding of the Vietnam War by providing coverage missing from historical accounts of this period. Literature on the Vietnam War has focused on a number of issues: America's initial involvement in Southeast Asia, the American perspective on the war, the experience of the American soldier, and the…

Presents interviews with a Mohawk midwife and an Onondaga chief concerning the importance of corn in Native American culture. Compares gestational cycle of corn to that of women. Describes the numerous uses of corn from eating and weaving. Explains how Native Americans and non-Native Americans can be taught about corn by incorporating art,…

Sylvia Plath's confessional poem, "Lady Lazarus" can be used to illustrate a connection between autobiography and social critique. "You poke and stir" among the institutions that form social relations--the educational system, the court system, the economic system--to find individuals whose lives, whose joys and pains, and…

A description of a 45-year university teaching career which included the development of a Speech and Communications department at California Polytechnic State University reveals that even though burn-out is a periodic influence on professional performance, one overriding element--a love of teaching--sustained the commitment of this professor. A…

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…

Literary scholars like Lynn Bloom consider truly private diaries as "bare-boned" works which are "written with neither art nor artifice." In 1995, a "pile of bones" arrived at one person's door delivered by Federal Express. They were the bones of her great aunt Annie Ray--fragments of the diary she kept from 1881 to…