Tag: Narratives

Free Download John Gaffey, "The Construction of Truth in Contemporary Media Narratives about Risk "
English | ISBN: 0367431491 | 2021 | 164 pages | EPUB | 1414 KB
The Construction of Truth in Contemporary Media Narratives about Risk provides a theoretical framework for how, in a post-truth era, media audiences are able to understand and navigate everyday risk. The book examines media risk narratives and explores forms of truth, experiential knowledge, and authority.

Free Download Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing
English | 2023 | ISBN: 3031172108 | 275 Pages | PDF EPUB (True) | 2 MB
This open access volume offers original essays on how motherhood and mothering are represented in contemporary fiction and life writing across several national contexts. Providing a broad range of perspectives in terms of geopolitical places, thematic concerns, and theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches, it demonstrates the significance of literary narratives for understanding and critiquing motherhood and mothering as social phenomena and subjective experiences. The chapters contextualize motherhood and mothering in terms of their particular national and cultural location and analyze narratives about mothers who are firmly placed in one national context, as well as those who are in "in-between" positions due to migrant experiences. The contributions foreground and link together the themes central to the volume: embodied experience and maternal embodiment; notions of what is "normal" or natural (or not) about motherhood; maternal health and illness; mother-daughter relations; maternality and memory; and the (im)possibilities of giving voice to the mother. They raise questions about how motherhood and mothering are marked by absence and/or presence, as well as by profound ambivalences.

Free Download Belinda Mendelowitz, "Language Narratives and Shifting Multilingual Pedagogies: English Teaching from the South "
English | ISBN: 1350165913 | 2023 | 256 pages | PDF | 14 MB
This book challenges monoglossic ideologies, traditional language pedagogies and dominant forms of knowledge construction by foregrounding multilingual and multicultural students’ language narratives, repertoires, and identities. The research is based on a sixteen-year longitudinal study of a sociolinguistics course at an English language university and the language narratives produced by the first-year education students. The study was borne out of a need to create a critically inclusive course that would engage a cohort of students from socially and linguistically diverse backgrounds in contemporary South Africa. Drawing on data from over 5,000 students who have journeyed through this course, this book shows how a narrative heteroglossic pedagogy harnesses students’ multilingual strengths. A close analysis reveals complex identity work by students located in the Global South. The authors argue that decolonising language education is about reconceptualising language, reconfiguring what knowledges are valued in the classroom, and reshaping pedagogy.

Free Download Ann Phoenix, "Researching Family Narratives"
English | ISBN: 1526439093 | 2020 | 248 pages | EPUB | 1116 KB
This edited book guides students and researchers through the processes of researching everyday stories about families. Showcasing the wide range methods and data sources currently used in narrative research, it features:

Free Download Lin Xiang, "Post-Sixties Narratives as Cultural Criticism: Seeking Radical Change in America"
English | ISBN: 0367355558 | 2020 | 194 pages | EPUB | 883 KB
This book examines the cultural criticism led by New York intellectuals from the 1960s onwards, considering the influence of such critique on American collective memory and contemporary public culture. With a focus on essays that appeared in Dissent magazine―one of the most important journals of the New York intellectuals―from the year of its launch in 1954 to its most recent issue, as well as representative books on American culture by Daniel Bell and Russell Jacoby, the author contends that post-Sixties narratives constitute a special paradigm of cultural criticism that seek radical possibilities for societal change in the US, based on a use of the 1960s as an index for understanding American cultural and political life. A study of the ways in which narratives can move beyond story-telling to have interpretative and ideological functions as a form of criticism, this book will appeal to scholars of cultural studies and sociology, as well as those working in the fields of linguistics and literary theory.

Free Download Montserrat Piera, "Remapping Travel Narratives, 1000-1700: To the East and Back Again"
English | 2018 | ISBN: 1942401590 | PDF | pages: 295 | 132.0 mb
With a specific focus on travel narratives, this collection looks at how Islamic and eastern cultural threads were weaved, through travel and trading networks, into Western European/Christian visual culture and discourse and, ultimately, into the artistic explosion which has been labeled the "Renaissance." Scholars from across humanities disciplines examine Islamic, Jewish, Spanish, Italian, and English works from a truly comparative and non-parochial perspective, to explore the transfer through travel of cultural and religious values and artistic and scientific practices, from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries.

Free Download Stories of School Yoga: Narratives from the Field By Andrea M. Hyde (editor), Janet D. Johnson (editor)
2019 | 204 Pages | ISBN: 1438475691 | PDF | 2 MB
The yoga-in-schools movement has been gaining momentum in recent years as adult practitioners realize the benefit of yoga in their personal lives and want to share it with children and youth. As the movement has grown, so has the need to understand how yoga works and its effects on individuals, groups, and school culture. Stories of School Yoga brings together firsthand narratives by teachers and practitioners from diverse settings nationwide to illuminate the multifaceted work, challenges, and benefits of teaching yoga to K-12 students in public schools. The stories here supplement and reframe quantitative research in the field; demonstrate how yoga can mitigate stress and tension, particularly amid an increased focus on standardized curricula and testing; and offer lessons learned and practical insights into planning, implementing, and running these programs. Rich in detail and accessible to nonspecialists, Stories of School Yoga presents helpful resources and a nuanced, on-the-ground look at the yoga-in-schools movement.

Free Download Romantic Narratives in International Politics: Pirates, Rebels and Mercenaries By Alexander Spencer
2016 | 232 Pages | ISBN: 0719095298 | PDF | 15 MB
Romantic Narratives in International Politics is a story about the importance of stories in International Relations (IR). It brings insights from literary studies and narratology into IR and political science by developing a new discourse analytical method of narrative analysis. Focusing on the three elements of setting, characterization and employment, the book argues that narratives are of fundamental importance for human cognition and identity construction; they help us understand the social and political world in which we live. Empirically the book looks at narratives about pirates, rebels and private military and security companies (PMSCs). It illustrates in the case of pirates and rebels that the romantic images embedded in cultural stories influence our understanding of modern piracy in places like Somalia or rebels in Libya. Dominant romantic tales marginalize other, less flattering, stories about these actors, in which they are constituted as terrorists and made responsible for human rights violations. In contrast, in the case of PMSCs in Iraq the absence of such romantic cultural stories makes it difficult for such actors to successfully narrate themselves as romantic heroes to the public. This book will be of interest to students and teachers of international relations, political science and cultural studies.

Free Download Reconsidering Dementia Narratives: Empathy, Identity and Care By Rebecca Bitenc
2019 | 272 Pages | ISBN: 0367151340 | PDF | 7 MB
Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.

Free Download Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son: The Paintings and Travel Diaries of Huang Xiangjian (1609-1673) By Elizabeth Kindall
2016 | 504 Pages | ISBN: 0674088433 | PDF | 69 MB
Huang Xiangjian, a mid-seventeenth-century member of the Suzhou local elite, journeyed on foot to southwest China and recorded its sublime scenery in site-specific paintings. Elizabeth Kindall’s innovative analysis of the visual experiences and social functions Huang conveyed through his oeuvre reveals an unrecognized tradition of site paintings, here labeled geo-narratives, that recount specific journeys and create meaning in the paintings. Kindall shows how Huang created these geo-narratives by drawing upon the Suzhou place-painting tradition, as well as the encoded experiences of southwestern sites discussed in historical gazetteers and personal travel records, and the geography of the sites themselves. Ultimately these works were intended to create personas and fulfill specific social purposes among the educated class during the Ming-Qing transition. Some of Huang’s paintings of the southwest, together with his travel records, became part of a campaign to attain the socially generated title of Filial Son, whereas others served private functions. This definitive study elucidates the context for Huang Xiangjian’s painting and identifies geo-narrative as a distinct landscape-painting tradition lauded for its naturalistic immediacy, experiential topography, and dramatic narratives of moral persuasion, class identification, and biographical commemoration.