Beyond Nostalgia

Beyond Nostalgia PDF Author: Ruth E. Ray
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919393
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
For three years, Ruth E. Ray visited and participated in eight writing groups at six senior centers in inner-city and suburban Detroit, looking for ways in which the elderly fashion their memories through personal narrative. Her innovative book involves the reader in the construction of life stories as a richly rewarding and highly social process that often reveals the types of relationships that dominate the lives of group members, the majority of whom are women. Because Ray wrote and responded herself and shares her anxiety and triumph in presenting her writing to women old enough to be her mother, some of a different race and class, Beyond Nostalgia is an excellent primer for professionals working with diverse groups in a variety of settings. It is also an important contribution to the emerging field of feminist gerontology. Ray's book demonstrates its own thesis that the presentation and negotiation of life stories in writing groups initiates change and personal growth among older people. Drawing on personal observations, the give-and-take of meeting conversations, lengthy interviews, and the life stories themselves, Ray tells a story of adult development through personal narrative. She recreates the group process through which age peers begin to articulate what life means, both individually and collectively. The writing groups of older adults that Ray studied challenged their members to consider not just cultural influences, but generational effects on the evolving content and structure of their life stories. Age, Ray argues, has been largely ignored by feminists and she makes a strong case for the need to learn how women make meaning of their lives across the life span. As an important document and analysis of that process, Beyond Nostalgia should appeal to academics and practitioners in women's studies, composition studies, gerontology, developmental psyschology, sociology, social work, and linguistics, and to anyone who works with older people.

Beyond Nostalgia

Beyond Nostalgia PDF Author: Ruth E. Ray
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919393
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
For three years, Ruth E. Ray visited and participated in eight writing groups at six senior centers in inner-city and suburban Detroit, looking for ways in which the elderly fashion their memories through personal narrative. Her innovative book involves the reader in the construction of life stories as a richly rewarding and highly social process that often reveals the types of relationships that dominate the lives of group members, the majority of whom are women. Because Ray wrote and responded herself and shares her anxiety and triumph in presenting her writing to women old enough to be her mother, some of a different race and class, Beyond Nostalgia is an excellent primer for professionals working with diverse groups in a variety of settings. It is also an important contribution to the emerging field of feminist gerontology. Ray's book demonstrates its own thesis that the presentation and negotiation of life stories in writing groups initiates change and personal growth among older people. Drawing on personal observations, the give-and-take of meeting conversations, lengthy interviews, and the life stories themselves, Ray tells a story of adult development through personal narrative. She recreates the group process through which age peers begin to articulate what life means, both individually and collectively. The writing groups of older adults that Ray studied challenged their members to consider not just cultural influences, but generational effects on the evolving content and structure of their life stories. Age, Ray argues, has been largely ignored by feminists and she makes a strong case for the need to learn how women make meaning of their lives across the life span. As an important document and analysis of that process, Beyond Nostalgia should appeal to academics and practitioners in women's studies, composition studies, gerontology, developmental psyschology, sociology, social work, and linguistics, and to anyone who works with older people.

Beyond Nostalgia

Beyond Nostalgia PDF Author: Tom Winton
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781468029284
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Born with blue in his collar instead of his veins, best-selling author Dean Cassidy chronicles his soul-scarring rise from New York's darkest alleys to a place high atop the literary world. As difficult and unlikely as such a climb is, there's yet another force working against Dean. He's forever haunted by treasured memories of his long-lost teenage soul-mate. Theresa! Theresa! Theresa! She just won't go away! Despite all Dean's hang-ups and mental baggage, he eventually does marry another woman. And for twenty years his wife, Maddy Frances, remains so giving (and forgiving) she deserves to be canonized a living saint. Even after she finds Dean unconscious at a botched suicide attempt--a time-faded photograph of Theresa clenched in his hands—her love never wavers. But is Maddy's loyalty enough to keep them together? Or will a force far stronger than fate alone change everything? (Be sure to check out Tom Winton's newest novel, The Last American Martyr.)

Beyond the Synagogue

Beyond the Synagogue PDF Author: Rachel B. Gross
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479820512
Category : Homesickness
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description


The Aesthetics of the "beyond"

The Aesthetics of the Author: Jianguo Chen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book is about an alternative mode of reading, thinking, and representing the intricacies of human experience in Chinase literature of the late twentieth century, which the author calls the aesthetics of the "beyond." It investigates how contemporary Chinese writers, by means of dynamic interface of literary practice and cultural philosophical considerations, engage the reader in critical reflection on and aesthetic appreciation of the complexity of human conditions. By studying the "beyond" in its various manifestations: the semiotics of human embodiment, the discourse of the phantasm, the politics of nostalgia with regard to "origin" and "center," and the metaphysics of death in the writings of some major contemporary Chinese writers, the book explores the ways in which the "beyond" is constructed as a new paradigm of critical thinking in literary, aesthetic, and philophical terms, in which its discursive strategies, structural features, and aesthetic possibilities are presented, and in which varied literary tropes are used in an attempt to unravel human experience in all its aspects. Jianguo Chen is a Professor of Chinese literature at the University of Delaware.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia PDF Author: Clay Routledge
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317363736
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Nostalgia is a topic that most lay people are familiar with, but, until recently, few social scientists understood. Once viewed as a disease, nostalgia is now considered to be an important psychological resource. It involves revisiting personally cherished memories that involve close others. When people engage in nostalgia, they experience a boost in positive psychological states such as positive mood, feelings of social connectedness, self-esteem, self-continuity, and perceptions of meaning in life. Since nostalgia promotes these positive states, when people experience negative states (such as loneliness or meaninglessness), they use nostalgia to regulate distress. This book explains in detail what nostalgia is, how views of it have changed over time, and how it has been studied by social scientists. It explores issues like how common nostalgia is and whether people differ in their tendency to be nostalgic. It looks at the triggers and inspiration for nostalgia, and the emotional states that are associated with it. Finally, the psychological, social, and behavioral effects of engaging in nostalgia are discussed. This volume provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the social scientific research into the complex and intriguing phenomenon of nostalgia. It will be of interest to a range of students and researchers in psychology and beyond, and its accessible writing style and engaging anecdotes will also be appreciated by a wider, non-academic audience.

Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers

Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers PDF Author: Claudia Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113571486X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Written for teaching professionals, this text helps novice and experienced teachers to reinterpret their working lives. Taking the reader on a personal exploration the text exceeds standard approaches, leading from the personal to the critical.

Beyond Nostalgia

Beyond Nostalgia PDF Author: Tom Winton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781783013180
Category : Authors
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Beyond Nostalgia is a poignant story about growing up, making choices, betrayal, forgiveness and moving on. Cassidy and Theresa find inspiration, joy and acceptance together in their world of dysfunctional families and economic hardships. But one night Cassidy, in a drunken stupor, makes a terrible choice that costs him his relationship with Theresa. Twenty-five years later, with the encouragement of his devoted wife, Cassidy focuses his sadness and angst into writing a book--a book that will eventually lead him to another crossroad in his life and redemption from his suffering.

Transcending the Nostalgic

Transcending the Nostalgic PDF Author: George Jaramillo
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800732228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Even as the global economy of the twenty-first century continues its dramatic and unpredictable transformations, the landscapes it leaves in its wake bear the indelible marks of their industrial past. Whether in the form of abandoned physical structures, displaced populations, or ecological impacts, they persist in memory and lived experience across the developed world. This collection explores the affective and “more-than-representational” dimensions of post-industrial landscapes, including narratives, practices, social formations, and other phenomena. Focusing on case studies from across Europe, it examines both the objective and the subjective aspects of societies that, increasingly, produce fewer things and employ fewer workers.

Consumed Nostalgia

Consumed Nostalgia PDF Author: Gary Cross
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom. Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change. Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.

Nostalgia after Apartheid

Nostalgia after Apartheid PDF Author: Amber R. Reed
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 026810879X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In this engaging book, Amber Reed provides a new perspective on South Africa’s democracy by exploring Black residents’ nostalgia for life during apartheid in the rural Eastern Cape. Reed looks at a surprising phenomenon encountered in the post-apartheid nation: despite the Department of Education mandating curricula meant to teach values of civic responsibility and liberal democracy, those who are actually responsible for teaching this material (and the students taking it) often resist what they see as the imposition of “white” values. These teachers and students do not see South African democracy as a type of freedom, but rather as destructive of their own “African culture”—whereas apartheid, at least ostensibly, allowed for cultural expression in the former rural homelands. In the Eastern Cape, Reed observes, resistance to democracy occurs alongside nostalgia for apartheid among the very citizens who were most disenfranchised by the late racist, authoritarian regime. Examining a rural town in the former Transkei homeland and the urban offices of the Sonke Gender Justice Network in Cape Town, Reed argues that nostalgic memories of a time when African culture was not under attack, combined with the socioeconomic failures of the post-apartheid state, set the stage for the current political ambivalence in South Africa. Beyond simply being a case study, however, Nostalgia after Apartheid shows how, in a global context in which nationalism and authoritarianism continue to rise, the threat posed to democracy in South Africa has far wider implications for thinking about enactments of democracy. Nostalgia after Apartheid offers a unique approach to understanding how the attempted post-apartheid reforms have failed rural Black South Africans, and how this failure has led to a nostalgia for the very conditions that once oppressed them. It will interest scholars of African studies, postcolonial studies, anthropology, and education, as well as general readers interested in South African history and politics.