Telling Women's Lives: Subject/Narrator/Reader/Text

Judy Long

Published by New York University Press 1999

Telling Women's Lives

Subject/Narrator/Reader/Text

Judy Long

Volume 5 in the series Feminist Crosscurrents

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814765227.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

For centuries, the "great man" format and masculine discourse of biography and autobiography have eclipsed women. If we accept this history, we remain ignorant of "Lady Sarashina," a Japanese woman of the Han period, whose book survives from the 11th century. We overlook Margaret Cavendish and Dame Julian, two early English autobiographers. And we fail to consider sufficiently slave narratives, oral histories, or lesbian "coming out" stories.
Telling Women's Lives assesses existing traditions of autobiography and biography in search of a method capable of conveying the distinctive content of women's lives while retaining the tenor of feminine subjectivity. Drawing on feminist research methodologies of the past two decades as well as anthropology and sociology, Long paves the way for the formulation of an emergent feminist methodology for telling women's lives.
This highly original study seeks to revise and recreate the genre so as to accommodate a feminine discourse, narrator, reader, and subject. The "messiness" of women's lives-the daily work and detail that men have programmatically excluded-acquires new meaning as Long develops here an innovative theory of sociobiography.

Author / Editor information

Long Judy :

Judy Long is Professor Emerita of Sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1 Telling Women’s Lives Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Gender and Genre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
3 Scribbling Women Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
4 Translating Darkness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
5 The Second Person in Social Science Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
6 Sociological Life History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
7 Feminist Biography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
8 A Feminist Approach to Telling Women’s Lives Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 9780814765227