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6 books match the query 'Life History'

cover of Doña María's Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity

Doña María's Story

Life History, Memory, and Political Identity

Daniel James

Duke University Press, 2000

In this remarkable book historian Daniel James presents the gripping, poignant life-story of Doña María Roldán, a woman who lived and worked for six decades in the meatpacking community of Berisso, Argentina. A union activist and fervent supporter of Juan and Eva Perón, Doña María’s evocative testimony prompts James to analyze the promise and problematic nature of using oral sources for historical research. The book thus becomes both fascinating narrative and methodological inquiry.
Doña María’s testimony is grounded in both the local context (based on the author’s thirteen years of historical and ethnographic research in Berisso) and a broader national narrative. In this way, it differs from the dominant genre of women’s testimonial literature, and much recent ethnographic work in Latin America, which have often neglected historical and communal contextualization in order to celebrate individual agency and self-construction. James examines in particular the ways that gender influences Doña María’s representation of her story. He is careful to acknowledge that oral history challenges the historian to sort through complicated sets of motivations and desires—the historian’s own wish to uncover “the truth” of an informant’s life and the interviewee’s hope to make sense of her or his past and encode it with myths of the self. This work is thus James’s effort to present his research and his relationship with Doña María with both theoretical sophistication and recognition of their mutual affection.
While written by a historian, Doña María’s Story also engages with concerns drawn from such disciplines as anthropology, cultural studies, and literary criticism. It will be especially appreciated by those involved in oral, Latin American, and working-class history.
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cover of Give Me This Mountain: LIFE HISTORY AND SELECTED SERMONS

Give Me This Mountain

LIFE HISTORY AND SELECTED SERMONS

Reverend C. L. Franklin

University of Illinois Press, 1989

"C.L. Franklin, the most imitated soul preacher in history, was a combination of soul and science and substance and sweetness."--Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, from the Foreword
Few black preachers have been better known that the Reverend C. L. Franklin; none has been considered a better preacher. This collection of twenty of Franklin's best sermons shows the development of his style. A learned man, Franklin had attended both seminary and college, yet in his sermons used the old-fashioned, extemporaneous style of preaching, "whooping" or chanting, combining oratory and intoned poetry to reach both head and heart.
Dozens of Franklin's sermons were released on record albums, and he went on preaching tours with gospel groups that included his daughter, Aretha Franklin, reaching virtually every corner of the United States.
This volume begins with Franklin's life history, told in his own words.
In an afterword, Jeff Titon reviews the African-American sermon tradition
and Franklin's place in it.
 
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cover of Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, and Culture

Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel

Life History, Politics, and Culture

Edited by Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo, and Galit Hasan-Rokem

Brandeis University Press, 2009

This fascinating interdisciplinary collection of essays brings gender issues to the foreground in order to redress a profound imbalance in the historiography of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and in the early years of the State of Israel. Although male discourse still dominates this field, some initial studies have begun to create an authentic and multifaceted Hebrew-Israeli voice by examining the activities and contributions of women. This research has led to a number of basic questions: What was the reality of life for women in Jewish society in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine (Eretz Israel), and in the early years of the State? What was the contribution of women to the renewal of Israeli society and culture? What is the place of gender perceptions in the study of the new local identity? The original articles in this anthology forge an innovative response to one or more of these questions, and reflecting the state of research in the field.
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cover of Journey of Navajo Oshley: An Autobiography and Life History

Journey of Navajo Oshley

An Autobiography and Life History

Robert McPherson

Utah State University Press, 2000

Ak'é Nýdzin, or Navajo Oshley, was born sometime between 1879 and 1893. His oral memoir is set on the northern frontier of Navajo land, principally the San Juan River basin in southeastern Utah, and tells the story of his early life near Dennehetso and his travels, before there were roads or many towns, from Monument Valley north along Comb Ridge to Blue Mountain. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Anglos and Navajos expanded their use and settlement of lands north of the San Juan. Grazing lands and the Anglo wage economy drew many Navajos across the river. Oshley, a sheepherder, was among the first to settle there. He cared for the herds of his extended family, while also taking supplemental jobs with the growing livestock industry in the area.

His narrative is woven with vivid and detailed portraits of Navajo culture: clan relationships, marriages and children, domestic life, the importance of livestock, complex relations with the natural world, ceremonies, trading, and hand trembling.

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cover of Juvenile Primates: Life History, Development and Behavior, with a new Foreword

Juvenile Primates

Life History, Development and Behavior, with a new Foreword

Edited by Michael E. Pereira and Lynn A. Fairbanks

University of Chicago Press, 2003

The first and still the only book focused exclusively on juvenile primates, this collection presents original research covering all the major divisions of primates, from prosimians to humans. Contributors explore the evolutionary history of the juvenile stage in primates, differences in behavior between juvenile males and females, how juvenile behaviors act both to prepare juveniles for adulthood and to help them survive the juvenile stage, how juveniles learn about and participate in social conflict and dominance relationships, and the similarities and differences between development of juvenile human and nonhuman primates. This edition includes a new foreword and bibliography prepared by the editors.

Contributors:
Filippo Aureli, Bernard Chapais, Marina Cords, Carolyn M. Crockett, Frans B. M. de Waal, Carolyn Pope Edwards, Robert Fagen, Carole Gauthier, Paul H. Harvey, Charlotte K. Hemelrijk, Loek A. M. Herremans, Julia A. Horrocks, Wayne Hunte, Charles H. Janson, Nicholas Blurton Jones, Katharine Milton, Leanne T. Nash, Timothy G. O'Brien, Mark D. Pagel, Theresa R. Pope, Anne E. Pusey, Lal Singh Rajpurohit, John G. Robinson, Thelma Rowell, Daniel I. Rubenstein, Volker Sommer, Elisabeth H. M. Sterck, Karen B. Strier, Carel P. van Schaik, Maria A. van Noordwijk, David P. Watts, and Carol M. Worthman.
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cover of The Alewives' Tale: The Life History and Ecology of River Herring in the Northeast

The Alewives' Tale

The Life History and Ecology of River Herring in the Northeast

Barbara Brennessel

University of Massachusetts Press, 2014

While on vacation in 1980, biologist Barbara Brennessel and her family came across an amazing sight: hundreds of small silver fish migrating from the Atlantic Ocean, across a channel connecting two ponds in the town of Wellfleet on Cape Cod. She later learned that these tiny river herring were important for the ecology and economy of the region and that volunteers were counting fewer and fewer fish migrating each year.

The Alewives' Tale describes the plight of alewives and blueback herring, two fish species that have similar life histories and are difficult to distinguish by sight. Collectively referred to as river herring, they have been economically important since colonial times as food, fertilizer, and bait. In recent years they have attracted much attention from environmentalists, especially as attempts are being made, on and beyond Cape Cod, to restore the rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, and estuaries that are crucial for their reproduction and survival.

Brennessel provides an overview of the biology of the fish—from fertilized eggs to large schools of adults that migrate in the Atlantic Ocean—while describing the habitats at different stages of their life history. She explores the causes of the dramatic decline of river herring since the mid-twentieth century and the various efforts to restore these iconic fish to the historic populations that treated many onlookers to spectacular inland migrations each spring.
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