Call Number | 13856 |
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Day & Time Location |
R 1:10pm-3:00pm 308A Lewisohn Hall |
Points | 4 |
Grading Mode | Standard |
Approvals Required | None |
Instructor | William McAllister |
Type | SEMINAR |
Method of Instruction | In-Person |
Course Description | Life histories and narratives don’t speak for themselves. To disclose what these have to offer, we have to analyze them. This can be true even if the teller or author of a story is making a point with her history or narrative. That is, this teller or that author is not the only interpreter of the narrative. And this is so whether it is about herself, about other people, about organizations, about movements, about whatever; whether it’s “real” or “imaginary;” whether the medium is words, images, sound, or whatever senses a “text” engages. Life histories and narratives—usually told as sequences of events, sometimes temporally sequential, maybe connected in the telling but maybe not—have to be analyzed to be understood. Put another way: How are you going to make sense of your interviews? We need to think about analytic methods to do so. This course focuses on what it means to deploy some such methods, the utility of doing so, and the importance of doing so self-consciously. Because we employ methods for substantive purposes, the course focuses on using methods for thinking about the relationship between individual lives and the social structures within which those lives are lived. That is, we learn how to develop and deploy C. Wright Mills’s “sociological imagination” through methods learned. |
Web Site | Vergil |
Department | Oral History |
Enrollment | 12 students (18 max) as of 1:06PM Thursday, December 12, 2024 |
Subject | Oral History (OHMA) |
Number | GR5025 |
Section | 001 |
Division | Interfaculty |
Section key | 20243OHMA5025G001 |