'Interpretive Biography' combines one of the oldest techniques in the social sciences and humanities with one of the newest. Bringing in elements of postmodernism and interpretive social science, it re-examines the biographical and autobiographical genres.

Mr. Johnson puts the outline of his aims in the form of two questions: "What was Emily Dickinson like?" and "As a poet, what was she trying to do?" He has answered both as fully as they can be answered. --Robert Hillyer.

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Like all writing, biographies are interpretive. In Interpretive Autoethnography, Norman Denzin combines one of the oldest techniques in the social sciences with one of the newest. Bringing in elements of postmodernism and interpretive social science, he reexamines the biographical and autobiographical genres as methods for qualitative researchers. Grounded in theory and rigorous analysis, this accessible book points up the inherent weaknesses in traditional biographical forms and outlines a new way in which biographies should be conceptualized and shaped. The book provides a guide to the assumptions of the biographical method, to its key terms, and to the strategies for gathering and interpreting such materials. Denzin introduces the key concept of "epiphany," or turning points in person’s lives. A final chapter returns to autoethnography’s primary purpose: to make sense of our fragmented lives.

The author sets out to capture Picasso's early life in this biography, exploring the originality of his art and ambition. At the heart of the interpretation is Picasso's first great love, Fernande Olivier, with whom the artist lived for seven years - a period which included his most revolutionary works. Fernande is given her own voice by way of excerpts from her candid memoirs. Including the artist's friendships with Apollonaire and Gertrude Stein, the book evokes the atmosphere of bohemian life in Paris in the early 1900s.

Expanded and revised, as well as translated, from the 1985 German edition, details the thought of Benjamin (1892-1940), an all-around European intellectual most active between the wars. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This study of black images in American motion pictures, is re-issued for its 30th anniverary in its 4th edition. It includes the entire 20th century through black images in film, from the silent era to the unequalled rise of the new African American cinema and stars of today. From The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, and Carmen Jones to Shaft, Do the Right Thing, Waiting to Exhale, The Hurricane, and Bamboozled, Donald Bogle reveals the way the image of blacks in American cinema has changed - and also the shocking way in which it has often remained the same.

Epstein's narrative interweaves interpretive and theoretical chapters as it emplots the discourse of English biography from Walton to Strachey. In this way familiar generic relationships between biographer, subject, life, text, falsehood, and readership are analyzed in specific (if constantly shifting) historical, literary, cultural, and economic texts.

Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington and his music have been an intregral part of the American scene for most of the 20th Century. Janna Tull Steed introduces the readers to the engaging, enigmatic man himself, as well as to the range of Ellington's musical achievement, with a lively mix of fact and anecdote.