Biography

The fragility of the notion of identity can be seen in the fact that it is never simply enough to be what one is, rather one must become what one is in order to give shape to that identity, or make it function effectively in political contexts. Yet this is to open up a dangerous gap between identity and identification, for identification in its emphasis on becoming what one is now has the capacity to change the content of identity into virtually anything.

—Richard F. Calichman

Books

Alcock, Susan E. Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscapes, Monuments, and Memories. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Focusing on Hellenistic and early Roman Greece, considers how monuments and material culture reflect both collective memory and amnesia.

Auyero, Javier. Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Revolution. Durham: Duke UP, 2003.

Through oral histories, diaries, interviews, public records, and official documents, focuses on two participants in 1990s protest movements in Argentina to show how popular protests are experienced and remembered, individually and collectively.

Banks, Elizabeth L. Campaigns of Curiosity: Journalistic Adventures of an American Girl in Late Victorian London. Intro. Mary Suzanne Schriber and Abbey Zink. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2003.

Reprint of the 1894 autobiography of an American journalist who went undercover to [End Page 625] investigate the conditions of poor working women in London; the introduction situates Banks and her text in the context of journalism, travel writing, and the "New Woman."

Bauer, Ralph. The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Compares colonial prose narratives in Spanish and British America from 1542 to 1800, focusing on shipwreck, captivity, and travel narratives, and imperial and natural histories, to ask how knowledge can be centrally controlled in expanding empires.

Beran, Michael. Jefferson's Demons: Portrait of a Restless Mind. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Account of the "strangeness and originality" of Jefferson.

Bernardin, Susan, Melody Graulich, Lisa MacFarlane, and Nicole Tonkovich. Trading Gazes: Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880-1940. Piscataway: Rutgers UP, 2003. (Reviewed in Biography 26.4.)

Biographical studies of four amateur women photographers—Jane Gay, Kate Cory, Mary Schäffer, and Grace Nicholson—who used photography to establish relations of exchange with Native peoples that challenged the traditional gaze of the dominant culture.

Blackmore, Josiah. Manifest Perdition: Shipwreck Narrative and the Disruption of Empire. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2002.

Shows how Portuguese shipwreck narratives from the 1600s and 1700s present an alternative historical record to the official chronicles of the empire.

Blanton, Casey. Travel Writing: The Self and the World. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Focuses on the development of the Anglo-American travel writing tradition, from Boswell through Chatwin.

Bloch, R. Howard. The Anonymous Marie de France. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.

Argues that the first female writer in French was keenly aware of the social and political powers of writing and of its role in preserving cultural memory.

Brown, Cecil. Stagolee Shot Billy. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002.

Traces the growth of the Stagolee legend and musical variants back to Stack Lee and a murder in St. Louis in 1895.

Bruner, Jerome. Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003.

Through autobiography, legal cases, and literature, explores how people make stories to make sense of their lives and of the moral and psychological issues that animate them. [End Page 626]

Burton, Antoinette. Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

Extending the understanding of archival material to the physical spaces of houses and memories of home, examines how women wrote about colonialism, partition, and nation building in India.

Couser, G. Thomas. Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003.

Explores ethical implications of life writing involving vulnerable subjects, such as those involved in intimate or trust-based relationships, unable to represent...