“I Feel Like I Can’t Avoid Dying”: A Poetic Representation of a Survivor’s Traumatic Experience in the Great East Japan Earthquake

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Iida
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Poetic Representation ◽  
Insight Into

This article is a poetic rendition of a recorded and transcribed oral personal life story of a survivor of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. The aim of the current study is to reproduce and explore his series of dramatic experiences in poetic form and better understand cultural trauma caused by the massive disaster–the magnitude 9.0 earthquake, subsequent tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. This article provides insight into the relatively unexamined issue of cultural trauma emerging from the unprecedented disaster and presents what the earthquake survivor saw and felt through such a catastrophe.

scholarly journals Mendöl Tibor (1905–1966), a Budapesti Tudományegyetem emberföldrajzi tanszékének alapító professzora

2021 ◽  
Vol 144 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-427
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
University Curriculum ◽  
History Of ◽  
Heritage Industry ◽  
The University ◽  
Insight Into

This article examines the career of Hungarian geographer, Tibor Mendöl, who was appointed the first Chair of Human Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 1940. Mendöl’s career had a bright start but was shattered following World War II. His story is not unique in Hungary, and in fact was common to other countries in the former Soviet sphere where a generation of geographers shared his fate. The history of Mendöl’s career and the reception of his work reaches beyond the significance of a personal life story. It offers insight into twentieth-century Hungarian geography and into Hungarian scholarly life in general. Mendöl’s career was emblematic of a period when geography–which had been institutionally strong, vital in public thought in Hungary, and important in a policy context–became marginalised within academia, and came very close to disciplinary annihilation. Mendöl was allowed to retain his chair up to his date of retirement, but his disciples had to leave the university. His efforts to publish his work were in turn hindered, and his scientific theories received strong criticism. Students of geography in Budapest probably did not even hear his name uttered, even a few years after his death. Mendöl’s works were even removed from the university curriculum. The output of the more recent Mendöl ‘heritage industry,’ however, proves that the legacy of his work has not yet been exhausted, and that his story remains relevant. Though the protagonist of this story has been dead for more than fifty years, his spirit (or perhaps his phantom) returns occasionally. Varying attitudes towards his life and work–from rejection, through concealment, to carefully expressed and later more bravely- worded tributes–have always been only partially about professional and subject-based issues. Interpretations of his life and work have also always been matters of historiography and politics.

Posthumous baggage. Harper Lee’s letters

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-214
Author(s):  
D. V. Zakharov
Keyword(s):  
Personal Life ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
To Kill A Mockingbird ◽  
Detailed List ◽  
Harper Lee ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

The article is devoted to the epistolary legacy of Nelle Harper Lee, the author of the American cult classic To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). The researcher examines a collection of Nelle’s letters written from 1956 to 2009, provides a detailed list of sources and makes suggestions about the potential new discoveries that could shed light on the life of ‘America’s most reclusive author.’ This short study of ‘posthumous baggage,’ as Lee referred to her private correspondence, offers an insight into the interests of the author, who insisted on keeping her personal life to herself. The letters included in the study concern the writer’s relationship to her father Amasa Coleman Lee, on whom she based the character of Atticus Finch, her attitude to her own biography published by Charles Shields, and personal anxieties of her final years. The author also details Lee’s opinions of literature, from the 19th-c. classics to contemporary authors, and shows how much she valued communication with her numerous fans.

Illusion of Freedom

2018 ◽  
pp. 145-184
Author(s):  
Jeronim Perović
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Rural Populations ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Male Population ◽  
Caucasus Region ◽  
Local Structures ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter explains developments during the early 1920s, when the Bolsheviks, for the sake of consolidating their still shaky hold on power, were eager to win over the rural populations and strengthen the alliances they had forged during the Civil War. One way to achieve this was to accommodate aspirations for freedom through the creation of autonomous administrative units in the form of ethnically defined territories, and by promoting members of the so called “titular nations” to positions of power. In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks even co-opted religious figures into administrative local structures in order to expand their power basis and gain the trust of the native populations. This chapter provides an insight into developments in the Soviet North Caucasus through the life story of the famous Chechen Sheikh Ali Mitaev, whom the Bolsheviks included into the regional Chechen government in 1923, only to arrest and kill him two years later. At the same time, the Bolsheviks also conducted several campaigns to disarm the male population. The case of Mitaev illustrates the ambiguities of Soviet nationalities policies, especially regarding their attitude towards Muslims, as well as the complex struggle for power and influence in the non-Russian populated North Caucasus region.

Story and Identity

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-181
Author(s):  
Karen E. Shackleford ◽  
Cynthia Vinney
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the way fictional stories impact personal identity. It discusses how identity develops with a particular focus on adolescence. Then, it sheds light on how fiction contributes to identity construction as teens gain insight into things like careers, relationships, values, and beliefs through stories and how these insights can impact their choices for their futures. The chapter also looks at the way people’s emotional investments in their favorite stories can cause them to become extensions of themselves and how this may lead them to use these stories as symbols of who they are. Finally, it explores the topic of narrative identity—the internalized, constantly evolving life story each person tells of himself or herself—and how fiction influences and becomes incorporated into people’s life stories.

scholarly journals Health as Experience: Exploring Health in Daily Life Drawing From the Work of Aaron Antonovsky and John Dewey

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 1004-1018
Author(s):  
Ninitha Maivorsdotter ◽  
Joacim Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Good Living ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Aaron Antonovsky

Research has pursued salutogenic and narrative approaches to deal with questions about how everyday settings are constitutive for different health practices. Healthy behavior is not a distinguishable action, but a chain of activities, often embedded in other social practices. In this article, we have endeavored to describe such a chain of activities guided by the salutogenic claim of exploring the good living argued by McCuaig and Quennerstedt. We use biographical material written by Karl Ove Knausgaard who has created a life story entitled My Struggle. The novel is selected upon an approach influenced by Brinkmann who stresses that literature can be seen as a qualitative social inquiry in which the novelist is an expert in transforming personal life experiences into common human expressions of life. The study illustrates how research with a broader notion of health can convey experiences of health, thereby complementing (and sometimes challenging) public health evidence.

Living in Darkness at the Time of the Great East Japan Earthquake: A Poetic-Narrative Autoethnography

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 270-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Iida
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Living Alone ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Poetic Narrative

This qualitative research employs expressive forms of writing to explore the author’s traumatic life experience in relation to the Great East Japan Earthquake which took place on March 11, 2011. The methodology chosen in the current study was a poetic-narrative autoethnography. The author selected both a collection of his English poems and poetic expressions of his Japanese second language students in English writing. While looking at each writer’s emotional response to this experience, narrative reflections and understandings of the tragedy were added. This study provides insights into a cultural trauma emergent from the disaster and presents the author’s personal experiences of living alone in a foreign country at the time of the dramatic earthquake and tsunami taking place in his home country.

scholarly journals Uncharted Waters: Influencing Practice Through a Life Course Approach: How Caregivers' Life Experience Can Influence the Care They Give to the Elderly at the End of Life

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katherine Anne Gellatly
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Care Pathway ◽  
Care Facility ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Aged Care ◽  
Nurse Specialist ◽  
Insight Into

<p>This project originates from my experience as a Palliative Care Nurse Specialist Educator working from a hospice environment. Observations and collaborative partnerships with staff in Aged Care Facilities provided insight into the palliative care needs of the residents at the end-of-life. Care Assistants (caregivers) provide the majority of direct care and spend most time with residents, with little training for providing that care, to residents with increasingly complex needs. A two phase exploratory descriptive project was designed using the life course research paradigm and life story narrative research to consider what life experience caregivers brought to their caregiving role in an Aged Care Facility in New Zealand and what influence education had on their work life. In the first phase a focus group, following education and the implementation of the Liverpool Care Pathway, was conducted and themes identified from an interdisciplinary staff team discussion. In phase two of the project four of the caregivers participated in a life story interview. The thematic analysis of these transcripts provided insight into the four caregivers' life experience. A novel method termed poetic condensation was used in the study to identify the essence of each person's life story. The researcher then reflected on each of the four life stories and identified the turning point in the person's life and a caring moment from the transcript. The discussion in the thesis reveals the impact of the education sessions and implementation of the Liverpool Care Pathway on the caregivers' practice and how this became a turning point in the delivery of care for the elderly residents particularly those who were dying in the Aged Care Facility. The researcher concludes the thesis by recognizing that her role as a palliative care clinical nurse specialist and educator is necessary to transfer specialist end-of-life knowledge and mentor staff as they shape best end-of-life practice.</p>

scholarly journals Uncharted Waters: Influencing Practice Through a Life Course Approach: How Caregivers' Life Experience Can Influence the Care They Give to the Elderly at the End of Life

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katherine Anne Gellatly
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Care Pathway ◽  
Care Facility ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Aged Care ◽  
Nurse Specialist ◽  
Insight Into

<p>This project originates from my experience as a Palliative Care Nurse Specialist Educator working from a hospice environment. Observations and collaborative partnerships with staff in Aged Care Facilities provided insight into the palliative care needs of the residents at the end-of-life. Care Assistants (caregivers) provide the majority of direct care and spend most time with residents, with little training for providing that care, to residents with increasingly complex needs. A two phase exploratory descriptive project was designed using the life course research paradigm and life story narrative research to consider what life experience caregivers brought to their caregiving role in an Aged Care Facility in New Zealand and what influence education had on their work life. In the first phase a focus group, following education and the implementation of the Liverpool Care Pathway, was conducted and themes identified from an interdisciplinary staff team discussion. In phase two of the project four of the caregivers participated in a life story interview. The thematic analysis of these transcripts provided insight into the four caregivers' life experience. A novel method termed poetic condensation was used in the study to identify the essence of each person's life story. The researcher then reflected on each of the four life stories and identified the turning point in the person's life and a caring moment from the transcript. The discussion in the thesis reveals the impact of the education sessions and implementation of the Liverpool Care Pathway on the caregivers' practice and how this became a turning point in the delivery of care for the elderly residents particularly those who were dying in the Aged Care Facility. The researcher concludes the thesis by recognizing that her role as a palliative care clinical nurse specialist and educator is necessary to transfer specialist end-of-life knowledge and mentor staff as they shape best end-of-life practice.</p>

scholarly journals A comparative analysis of literary depictions of social violence in two important 16th Century autobiographies, from the perspective of the fencing manuals of the Renaissance.

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-137
Author(s):  
Jean Chandler
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
High Status ◽  
Social Violence ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Middle Strata ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Renaissance Artist

Abstract In the late 16th century two interesting individuals made substantial contributions to the relatively new genre of the autobiography. In 1595 Bartholomäus Sastrow (1520–1603), a north German burgher, notary, diplomat, and eventually burgomeister of the Hanseatic City of Stralsund, penned his life story. Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), goldsmith, soldier, musician and famous Renaissance artist from Florence, wrote his memoir between 1558 and 1563. Though they were born twenty years apart, both men had similar backgrounds. Both were from the lower-middle strata of society but rose to high status, both were widely traveled and directly acquainted with the most powerful individuals of their time (as well as some of the most lowly) and both experienced firsthand some of the most dramatic and important political and military events of the mid-16th century. Amidst a backdrop of war and severe religious conflict, Sastrow, a German and a Lutheran, traveled to Italy, and Cellini, an Italian Catholic, travelled through Germany to France. This allows us to see each region from both a native and an outsider’s perspective. Both men participated in or were witness to numerous incidents of social violence and warfare during their lifetimes, as described in detail in their memoirs. These accounts give us an opportunity to examine the depiction of incidents of social violence by people who witnessed or participated in them first-hand, allowing us to contrast these episodes with the principles of self-defense as portrayed in the fightbooks. We can also compare these personal anecdotes with documented written and unwritten rules governing dueling, fighting, and the carrying of arms. This will help grant us further insight into the reality of personal armed conflict in the era of the fightbooks, and improve our understanding of their context and meaning.

Schliemann's discovery of ‘Priam's treasure’: a re-examination of the evidence

1984 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Traill
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Complex Character ◽  
Subsequent Research ◽  
The One ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
New View

The importance of Schliemann's excavations at Troy, Mycenae and elsewhere is beyond dispute. Yet the aura of greatness which his remarkable achievements have rightly conferred on his name has tended to blur our perception of the man himself. Psychoanalytic studies by W. G. Niederland have offered fresh insight into his complex character, but it is the paper given by W. M. Calder III on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth that marks the beginning of the new sceptical attitude to Schliemann. Calder pointed out that Schliemann's autobiographical writings contain many false claims and purely fictitious episodes which biographers have uncritically accepted as fact. This new view of Schliemann as an unreliable witness, which, incidentally, was held by many of his contemporaries, has now been confirmed and expanded by subsequent research.It is principally in matters of his personal life that recent studies have exposed Schliemann's propensity for lies and fraud. However, G. Korres has shown that in his scholarly work too Schliemann did not shrink from seriously misrepresenting the truth. It is the purpose of the present article to demonstrate that even Schliemann's archaeological reports are vitiated by this kind of behaviour. We are not here concerned with Schliemann's interpretations of his discoveries.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document