HON 499: Professor Moon's Library Instruction (Dr. Duncan): RJC (LH)

The practice of selling one's tale of woe to make a buck has long been a part of American culture. "The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-Century America" is a powerful cultural history of how ordinary Americans crafted and sold their stories of hardship and calamity during the nineteenth century. Ann Fabian examines the tales of beggars, convicts, ex-slaves, prisoners of the Confederacy, and others to explore cultural authority, truth-telling, and the nature of print media as the country was shifting to a market economy. This well-crafted book describes the fascinating controversies surrounding these little-read tales and returns them to the social worlds where they were produced. Drawing on an enormous number of personal narratives--accounts of mostly poor, suffering, and often uneducated Americans--"The Unvarnished Truth" analyzes a long-ignored tradition in popular literature. Historians have treated the spread of literacy and the growth of print culture as a chapter in the democratization of refinement, but these tales suggest that this was not always the case. Producing stories that purported to be the plain, unvarnished truth, poor men and women edged their way onto the cultural stage, using storytelling strategies far older than those relying on a Renaissance sense of refinement and polish. This book introduces a unique collection of tales to explore the nature of truth, authenticity, and representation.

..". rich and thought-provoking... That kind of collaborative writing is feminist scholarship at its best, and exhaustingly difficult." The Women s Review of Books "A substantial contribution to women s studies and autobiographical criticism." Choice ..". exciting.... will lead to new insight and appreciation of the variety and complexity of women s lives." Feminist Collections ..". provocative... " American Ethnologist ..". rich in thought-provoking insights into the particular ways women have been socialized and the individual routes through which they have successfully resisted roles and paradigms of behavior inimical to the development of a robust sense of self." Women and Language ..". very fine collection of essays... " Auto/Biography Studies "The essays deal with a fascinatingly broad palette of personal narrative types... This book is to be recommended to anyone interested in feminist research..." Monatshefte This groundbreaking multidisciplinary and multicultural examination of women s oral and written documents offers rich insights into the ways that women s voices and life stories can inform scholarly research. The book expands our understanding of both the shared experience of gender and the profound differences among women."

As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This bookNa follow-up volume to Barlow's Rise of the Blogosphere, which examined the historical context for the modern blogNprovides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between. Given that millions of blogs have been created over the past five years and yet more come online at an undiminished rate, and given that enthusiasm for both reading them and writing them has yet to wane, it is likely that the blog explosion will continue indefinitely.--As blogs have evolved over the last few years, they have begun to take on distinct characteristics depending on audience and purpose. Though political blogs remain the most high profile (and most read), other types of blogs are gaining in strength and visibility. This bookNa follow-up volume to Barlow's Rise of the Blogosphere, which examined the historical context for the modern blogNprovides an examination of the many current aspects of the blogosphere, from the political to the professional to the personal, with many stops in between.--Areas covered include the personal blog; the political blog; the use of blogs by various religious communities both for discussion within communities and for outreach; the growth of blogs dedicated to specific geographic communities, and their relations with older local media; blogs dedicated to technical subjects, particularly relating to computers; blogs and business; blogs sparked by video games, movies, music, and other forms of entertainment; and more. Given that millions of blogs have been created over the past five years and yet more come online at an undiminished rate, and given that enthusiasm for both reading them and writing for them has yet to wane, it is likely that the blog explosion will continue indefinitely."

Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter Are Transforming Popular Culture explores the ongoing digital revolution and examines the way it is changing—and will change—the way people live and communicate. Starting from the proposition that the Internet is now the center of popular culture, the book offers descriptions of blogs and Twitter and the online behavior they foster. It looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism. A primary focus is on the way blogs and tweets are opening up communication to the people, free from gatekeepers and sanctioned rhetoric. The other side of the coin is the online hijacking of the news and its potential for spreading misinformation and fomenting polarization, topics that are analyzed even as the situation continues to evolve. Finally, the book gathers predictions from cultural critics about the future of digital popular culture and makes a few predictions of its own.

Blogging has profoundly influenced not only the nature of the internet today, but also the nature of modern communication, despite being a genre invented less than a decade ago. This book-length study of a now everyday phenomenon provides a close look at blogging while placing it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context. Scholars, students and bloggers will find a lively survey of blogging that contextualises blogs in terms of critical theory and the history of digital media. Authored by a scholar-blogger, the book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication.

Blogs are not a fad. They are a new species of written conversation, a complex network of influence spanning everything from political debates to torrid confessions to urgent bulletins from first responders. The days when three network anchors would tell us what to think are gone; now we get to tell one another. Say Everythingoffers close-ups of blogging innovators like Blogger founder Evan Williams, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, exhibitionist diariest Justin Hall, and many others, and explores the dilemmas that still face bloggers: How much if their private lives should they reveal? Should they blog for the love or for money? Is blogging anonymous ranting or honest, unmediated discussion? Through their stories,Say Everythingpresents essential insights into privacy, self-expression, authority, and community for all of us in the era of Google and Facebook. In his first book,Dreaming in Code,Scott Rosenberg brilliantly explored the art of creating software ("the first true successor to Tracy Kidder'sThe Soul of a New Machine," wrote James Fallows inThe Atlantic). InSay Everythinghe brings the same perceptive eye to the blogosphere, capturing as no one else has the birth of a new medium.

In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike. Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. In turn, Telling Stories demonstrates how the knowledge produced by personal narrative analysis is not simply contained in the stories told; the understanding that takes place between narrator and analyst and between analyst and audience enriches the results immeasurably."