CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN MEMORY, NARRATIVE AND HISTORIES
UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON
RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES 2011-12
Professor Timothy Ashplant, independent scholar
"Working-class Life Writing: from Micro-story to Macro-perspectives
through a Critical and Pedagogic Online Edition"
Wednesday 19th October 2011
5.30 get together and drinks for 6.00 start until c. 7.30
M57, CRD, Mezzanine Floor, Grand Parade, University of Brighton
Despite the "theory revolution" of the 1970s onwards in literary
studies, and the earlier shift to "history from below", working-class
writing – including life-writing – remains relatively neglected and
few works have been accorded close textual and contextual attention.
This paper will sketch out a project I am just beginning: to create an
online edition of one working-class life narrative by George Hewins
(1879-1977): The Dillen: Memories of a Man of Stratford-upon-Avon
(1981). This text was produced by Hewins's granddaughter-in-law,
Angela Hewins, from interviews she conducted with him in his mid-90s.
Textual and contextual links through the web could make the book a
microhistorical window onto late Victorian and Edwardian England.
Textually, Hewins's narrative is woven from various discourses,
including folk song and music-hall. Links could be made from his use
of music-hall songs into primary (recordings, sheet music) and
secondary (histories of music hall) sources. Contextual links would
locate his personal experiences of the Volunteers, the workhouse, the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre within wider civic, county and national
structures of power and ideology. I envisage the seminar as a space
for preliminary exploration, to test what might be called "proof of
concept", and hope for lively discussion about possibilities and
problems.
T. G. Ashplant was formerly Professor of Social and Cultural History.
He is author of Fractured Loyalties: Masculinity, Class & Politics in
Britain, 1900-30 (2007); co-editor of Explorations in Cultural History
(with G. Smyth 2001), and The Politics of War Memory & Commemoration
(with G. Dawson & M. Roper 2000); and an editor of the International
Auto/Biography Association (Europe)'s new e-journal, the European
Journal of Life-Writing, published by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
from 2012.
All welcome. For further information please contact Graham Dawson: [log in to unmask]
telephone 01273 643089 or visit the Centre's website: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/mnh
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