Friday Findings
Trust your memory? Maybe you shouldn’t
CNN’s Jacque Wilson reports on the work of cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on the malleability of human memory. Loftus is famously controversial for her research into so-called “repressed memories,” which her critics say are actually false memories. But Loftus has also demonstrated the unreliability of eye-witness testimony and explored the use of memory manipulation to treat eating disorders and addictions such as alcoholism.
What writers see in life, language and literature
Roy Peter Clark knows that writers don’t merely look at things; they truly see:
I once heard of a clever writing prompt given to school children: “If you had a third eye, what could you see?” Writers, I would argue, already have a third eye. They use it to see life, language and literature in special ways.
This third eye has a number of different names. It’s called vision (and then revision), curiosity, inspiration, imagination, visitation of the muse. When an ordinary person says “I see,” she usually means “I understand.” If she’s a writer, she means that and much more. For the writer, seeing is a synecdochic and synesthetic gerund. It stands for all the senses, all the ways of knowing.
Take a look at his list of 50 “things I think writers see in life, language and literature.”
Thriller that delves into the dark side of fairytales
Fairy tales fascinate novelist Alison Littlewood:
Her second book Path of Needles was published last week and is a compelling read, focusing on a series of murders which, from the gruesome way in which the victims’ bodies are posed, appear to have a connection with fairytales. A young police officer, Cate Corbin, is part of the investigating team and on a hunch she calls in academic Alice Hyland, an expert in fairytales, to assist them on the case.
Fairy tales are enduring stories that deal with some of the more unsavory aspects of human nature. Says Littlewood, “I tend to write about things that personally scare me and I’m also fascinated by the fact that, despite all the technological advances we have made, there are still things we can’t explain.”
Does Prozac help artists be creative?
More than 40 million people globally take an SSRI antidepressant, among them many writers and musicians. But do they hamper the creative process, extinguishing the spark that produces great art, or do they enhance artistic endeavour?
In The Guardian, novelist Alex Preston takes an in-depth look at the question of whether psychiatric drugs help or hinder artistic creativity.
Friday Findings
Fractured Knowledge
Pieces of Light
Journalist and novelist Orli Van Mourik reviews Charles Fernyhough’s new book Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts (Harper, 2013):
If you’re interested in understanding the basic machinery of memory—how memories are encoded, where they are stored in the brain, and how they are retrieved—-Pieces of Light is a great primer. What it isn’t is a significant step forward in understanding the bigger mysteries surrounding memory: what purpose it serves and how it contributes to the formation of the self. This is a particular shame because Fernyhough’s book deals largely with autobiographical memory, the aspect of memory in which “I” plays the starring role. In James’s era, a period when the boundaries between physiology, psychology, and philosophy were more permeable, a book about autobiographical memory would have been expected to grapple directly with these larger questions of the memory’s role in self-awareness. In today’s more stratified scientific world there is such an intolerance of conjecture that Fernyhough is forced to dance around these questions while treating us to a whirlwind tour of the latest fMRI findings. Brain buffs will come away from the book armed with an arsenal of quiz show-worthy facts about the behavior of the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. However, the ultimate utility of this information to the layperson is debatable. Most of us don’t pick up a book like this hoping for an anatomy lesson, but for insights into the human condition, and Fernyhough is too tentative to put himself out on the intellectual ledge that [William] James clambered up so willingly.
Her argument is that the father of modern psychology, William James, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, was unencumbered by the existence of modern technology capable of imaging the brain; James was therefore able to speculate, using intuition and imagination, about consciousness in a way that Fernyhough cannot because of modern science’s demand for empirical evidence: “Fernyhough’s unwillingness to reach for a bigger theory of memory’s role in consciousness isn’t a personal or scholarly failing as much as a reflection of the generally anemic quality of today’s scientific inquiry.”
This situation is unfortunate, she writes, because “real breakthroughs are often catalyzed by a mix of both understanding and intuition.”
Our Inner Voices
In a good companion piece to the previous one, Daniel Lende, associate professor in anthropology at the University of South Florida, riffs on the voices we all carry around with us inside our heads:
A pastiche of a post, putting together ideas and research on inner voices:
-How to document the conversations we carry on with ourselves most everyday (in the West at least)
-The importance of inner voices for rebuilding our notion of mental illness
-The role hearing voices (and working with those voices) can play in therapy for schizophrenia
-What it’s like to be without such an inner voice
-The inner voices in addiction.The post points to how we might rethink clinical practice and laboratory tests in ways that reflect better the natural history of our own voices, and the power of language in our lives. That, in turn, would lead to both conceptual reworkings and applied impact.
Lende incorporates an amazing amount of material from various disciplines, with links included for many of his sources. His emphasis is on our use of language and on implications for mental health practices.
If you find interdisciplinary approaches like this one as fascinating as I do, check out this blog’s description of neuroanthropology.
Adventures in Neurohumanities
Or (see previous item) you’re not as fascinated as I am by interdisciplinary approaches to literature and other art forms, see Alissa Quart’s analysis: “Applying neuroscience to the study of literature is fashionable. But is it the best way to read a novel?”
The Best Little Boy in the World — That’s Me
Attorney Adam D. Chandler describes how his life mirrors:
a recently published study by John Pachankis and Mark Hatzenbuehler. They have substantiated what’s called the “Best Little Boy in the World” hypothesis, first put forward in 1973 in a book by Andrew Tobias, then writing under a pseudonym. It’s the idea that young, closeted men deflect attention from their sexuality by investing in recognized markers of success: good grades, athletic achievement, elite employment and so on. Overcompensating in competitive arenas affords these men a sense of self-worth that their concealment diminishes.
Biographies do not commonly lurk in stuffy academic journals, but there was mine, in that study in the latest issue of Basic and Applied Social Psychology. It might as well have been subtitled: “The Adam Chandler Story.”
Dr. Joyce Brothers, Psychologist Who Dispensed Advice to Millions, Dies at 85 – NYTimes.com
Dr. Joyce Brothers, Psychologist Who Dispensed Advice to Millions, Dies at 85 – NYTimes.com
Joyce Brothers, a former academic psychologist who, long before Drs. Ruth, Phil and Laura, was counseling millions over the airwaves, died on Monday at her home in Fort Lee, N.J. She was 85.
Her daughter, Lisa Brothers Arbisser, confirmed the death.
Dr. Joyce Brothers, as she was always known professionally — a full-name hallmark of the more formal times in which she began her career — was widely described as the mother of mass-media psychology because of the firm, pragmatic and homiletic guidance she administered for decades via radio and television.
Historically, she was a bridge between advice columnists like Dear Abby and Ann Landers, who got their start in the mid-1950s, and the self-help advocates of the 1970s and afterward.
Friday Findings
Noticing: How To Take A Walk In The Woods
Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of religion, hit the core of our problem when he wrote, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.”
Adam Frank has some advice for becoming more aware of the experience of living: take a walk in the woods, and look around like a scientist. And don’t retort that you’re not a scientist: “You already are a scientist. You have been since you were a kid playing with water in the tub, or screwing around in the backyard with dirt and sticks and stuff.”
Refining our capacity to notice is an act of reverence that we can bring to everywhere and everywhen. It’s an invitation, bringing the world’s most basic presence into view, opening our horizons and restoring our spirits. And that is what science is really there for.
Profiling Serial Creators
Most teachers, when asked if they value creativity in their students, say that of course they do. But when asked, in a different context, what the characteristics are of students that they like best and least, characteristics of creative people fill their “least liked” list. This is because creative children are the least docile in the classroom. They tend to work better on their own than with others, they focus on what catches their interest to the exclusion of other things, and they see associations and relationships between objects and ideas that most other people do not see. In other words, creative children can be disruptive in the classroom, and they are often bored with the material being presented.
And that’s too bad, says Scott Barry Kaufman, author of Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, which will come out this summer:
Since so much is at stake for increasing creativity in society, it’s essential that we continually question and attempt to improve the methods by which we identify, mentor, and cultivate those who are ready and capable of becoming our next generation of innovators. Tragically, we are failing these students, often unknowingly letting them fall between the cracks in an education system that rewards characteristics that dampen creativity, such as conformity, standardization, and efficiency.
Read his research on alternative ways to identity and nurture creativity in children.
Researchers chart new path for study of ageism
Here’s an interesting article on the study of prescriptive stereotypes—those stereotypes that specify how certain groups should be—of older adults. This research comes from two scientists at Princeton University, Susan Fiske and Michael North:
The research by North and Fiske homes in on the idea that understanding intergenerational tension is key to understanding ageism. Ageism is the one kind of discrimination, North noted, in which those who are generally doing the discriminating—younger generations—will eventually become part of the targeted demographic.
Writing our Story
a few years back I became aware that I was living in a story that I hadn’t intentionally or consciously written for myself. It was a default story. I was living out the storyline of “abandoned girl” who believed she could not count on others and that she must do it all herself. She must be self-sufficient, strong, and prove herself capable in all matters. The main character in my story was controlling, driven, unintentionally selfish and dis-empowering to others. And boy, was this story laden with victim-mindset beliefs and self-limitation.
This was not the story I had imagined for my life! I wanted to be graceful and compassionate. I wanted to do work that I loved and that makes a difference in the world. I wanted to be a loving, calm parent and spouse.
De Yarrison explains how she changed her life by changing her life story. And she offers some tips on how other people can do the same.
When is telling all too much? Drunk Mom memoir pushes the boundaries
The first piece of advice given to anyone working on a memoir is to be honest, to tell the truth about one’s own life. But is it possible to be TOO honest, Sarah Hampson asks. She thinks Jowita Bydlowska’s memoir Drunk Mom suggests a positive answer to that question:
She doesn’t want it to be about anything more than the words, the sentences, the writing, all of which are skillful, spare, lovely. But it is. Her memoir, Drunk Mom, is a terrifying journey about her relapse into alcohol abuse after her son was born. She had been sober for three and a half years. She started drinking again before he was born, then stopped during the pregnancy. To celebrate his birth, she had a glass of wine, and her addiction came back, full-grown and needy, like a long-lost, jealous child bent on taking her away from the innocent one, asleep in his crib.
This is a memoir that pushes at boundaries – what is private, what should perhaps be kept private, what we need to know, what we don’t, what is insightful or just exhibitionism. It is already one of the most talked about books of the season. Bydlowska is very honest in her writing. Let me be as well then. There’s self-harm in choosing to publish this memoir. It’s just like alcoholism: the recklessness of it; the abandonment of responsibility to her partner, to their relationship, to her child, now almost 4, and also, most painfully, to herself.
Monica Wood’s “When We Were the Kennedys” Wins Story Circle Network’s Sarton Women’s Memoir Award
Story Circle Network: 2012 Sarton Memoir Award Announced.
(Austin, TX. March 22, 2013)—The Story Circle Network (SCN) is pleased to announce that Monica Wood has been granted the Sarton Women’s Memoir Award for her book When We Were the Kennedys (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). The book tells the story of Wood’s mill town childhood in Mexico, Maine, and her Catholic family’s struggles after the sudden death of her father in 1963. Her family’s overwhelming grief is tenderly, artfully woven into the whole nation’s grief for the death of President Kennedy, and with the healing that comes with the acceptance of loss. One of our judges wrote, “I absolutely loved this book, and loved every single moment of reading it. It was the best book I’ve read in years, and I read a lot of books!” And we agree.
The Women’s Memoir Award is named for May Sarton, distinguished American memoirist, poet, and novelist and is offered annually by the Story Circle Network, an international nonprofit association of women life-writers. For information about the 2013 award cycle, visit SCN’s website at storycircle.org/SartonMemoirAward.
SCN also sponsors the largest and longest-lived women’s book review site on the Internet; a program of online writing classes taught by and for women; an editorial service; and the bi-annual conference, “Stories From the Heart.” Membership in SCN is open to any woman who is interested in writing about her life experiences. For details: www.storycircle.org.
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Friday Findings
Facebook Is a Social Outlet and Brain Booster for Seniors
Yes, Facebook can be a time suck. But:
Researchers at the University of Arizona have found that the social media site isn’t just for uploading party photos and killing time. Facebook also boosts the cognitive abilities of older people and provides them with a stronger connection to their loved ones.
Using Facebook provided both social engagement and cognitive stimulation for study participants:
The adults who learned to use Facebook performed about 25 percent better on tasks that measured their cognitive abilities. They were also better able to do “updating,” a psychological term meaning that they could quickly add to or recall parts of their working memory as needed. Those who had used the private online diary site Penzu or who had not used Facebook at all saw no such cognitive gains.
The article provides tips on helping older relatives or friends learn how to use social media.
The Science of “Chunking,” Working Memory, and How Pattern Recognition Fuels Creativity
If you haven’t yet discovered Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings, here’s a start. In this entry she discusses The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning by Cambridge neuroscientist Daniel Bor. Bor’s book examines “how our species’ penchant for pattern-recognition is essential to consciousness and our entire experience of life.” The basis for the ability to recognize patterns is working memory, where the brain temporarily stores individual items for further processing. And working memory can be improved by “a concept called chunking, which allows us to hack the limits of our working memory — a kind of cognitive compression mechanism wherein we parse information into chunks that are more memorable and easier to process than the seemingly random bits of which they’re composed.”
Read on to find out how pattern recognition can be a hindrance as well as an advantage. But be warned: Popova’s site is so rich that, once you start reading, you won’t want to stop.
The Surprising Power of an Emotional ‘Memory Palace’
While it can be difficult for anyone to remember happier times, the task is especially difficult for people with depression. This article reports on a study of whether building a memory palace can help people conjure up happier times:
The method-of-loci technique, which relies on spatial memory, is remarkably simple to explain, but does require some mental effort to set up. What you do is think of a place that you know really well, like a house you lived in as a child or your route to work. Then you place all the things you want to remember around the house as you mentally move around it. Each stop on the journey should have one object relating to a memory. The more bizarre and surreal or vivid you can make these images, the better they will be remembered.
If you carried out this process for a series of good memories, you’d have what is called a ‘memory palace’ of happy times that you could return to in moments of stress.
The study found that people who had used the method-of-loci technique to construct their memory palace were later able to recall more happpy memories than people who had rehearsed memories without the organizing technique.
Celebrate International Women’s Day
via internationalwomensday.com
Today is International Women’s Day.
And here, once again courtesy of the folks at The Scout Report, are some informative sites.
WomenWatch: UN Information and Resources on Gender Equality and Empowerment
The WomenWatch website is dedicated to providing “information and resources on gender equality and empowerment of women.” It is an initiative of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) and the site is a veritable cornucopia of information on this vast and timely subject. In the Quick Links and Features, visitors can view the UN Gender Equality News Feed, which is a great way to get a sense of the main issues affecting women around the world. Moving on, the Documents and Publications area contains seminal reports such as “Seeing Beyond the State: Grassroots Women’s Perspectives on Corruption and Anti-Corruption.” Also, the News and Highlight s area contains links to partner organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. These links include radio clips, news releases, and other key pieces of information.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
Gifts of Speech: Women’s Speeches from Around the World
The Gifts of Speech site brings together speeches given by women from all around the world. The site is under the direction of Liz Linton Kent Leon, who is the electronic resources librarian at Sweet Briar College. First-time users may wish to click on the How To… area to learn how to navigate the site. Of course, the FAQ area is a great way to learn about the site as well, and it should not be missed as it tells about the origin story for the site. In the Collections area, visitors can listen in to all of the Nobel Lectures delivered by female recipients and look at a list of the top 100 speeches in American history as determined by a group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A & M Univ ersity. Users will also want to use the Browse area to look over talks by women from Robin Abrams to Begum Kahaleda Zia, the former prime minster of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
International Museum of Women
This wonderful website provides information about and links to the exhibits curated by the International Museum of Women (IMOW). The goal of the Museum is “to inspire creativity, awareness and action on vital global issues for women.” The Museum, which exists online only, has a global council that includes prominent women like Zainab Salbi and Eve Ensler. First-time visitors should browse the Exhibition area, as it features rotating exhibits like “Curating Change.” This display features a wonderful set of women like Mahnaz Afkhami and Tiffany Dufu talking about leadership, community, and other pertinent topics. Users shouldn’t miss the Events area, as it contains information about the IMOW’s special events, along with information on past events and a community calendar. Educators, activists, and others will want to give the Community area close consideration. Here they will find ways to connect with other interesting people and powerful ideas from around the world. The site is rounded out by an in-house blog, “Her Blueprint.”
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
Friday Findings: Women’s History Month Edition
via New York Civil Liberties Union
March is Women’s History Month.
And The Scout Report has kindly collected a list of pertinent resources. If you haven’t yet checked out The Scout Report, I highly encourage you to do it. It’s a source you can trust for information about valuable internet resources on lots of topics.
And now, here’s the good stuff.
Discovering American Women’s History Online
Based at Middle Tennessee State University, this valuable database gives interested parties access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, and so on) that document the history of women in the United States. Visitors can browse the database by subject, place, time period, or primary source type. There are many fascinating resources and links here, including letters from Abigail Franks to her son from the 1730s and 1740s and Katrina Thomas’ wonderfully evocative photographs of various ethnic weddings. Even a close appraisal of items listed by primary source is delightful, as the headings here include everything from broadsides to buttons to trade cards. One particularly noteworthy collection contains the papers of the late Irene Kuhn, who was a global traveler, journalist, and social commentator.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
The mission of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is to document “the lives of women of the past and present for the future.” The library is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and interested parties can peruse the Library’s announcements, scholarship opportunities, and digital collections here. The Picks & Finds area is a great place to start, as it contains a range of interesting posts and essays like “Dining with Dissent: Politics and Protest in Vegetarian Cookbooks.” Visitors shouldn’t miss the selections from the Kip Tiernan papers. Mary Jane “Kip” Tiernan was known for her work with organizations that aided the poor, homeless, and socially oppressed. One of her most notable accomplishments was the creation of Rosie’s Place, which was the first emergency drop-in shelter for women in the United States. Additionally, the library has the collected papers of the late Julia Child. In the overview of area, visitors can listen to Child talk about their culinary collections and also view selected papers.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
National Women’s History Project
Founded in 1980, the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) was created by a group of women committed to recognizing women’s historical achievements. The organization was responsible for lobbying Congress to designate March as National Women’s History Month, and today, they provide information and training in multicultural women’s history for educators, community organizers, and parents. On the site, visitors can learn about the NWHP’s many outreach efforts, or explore by clicking on the Women’s History Month tab. Here, interested parties will find materials on the annual Women’s History Month celebration, along with some fun quizzes and press releases. The Resource Center contains essays about prominent women, along with an archive of Great Speeches by women and resources for teachers. Finally, the site is rounded out by a News and Events area that contains updates about other events the NWHP supports, such as National Nurses Week and Women’s Equality Day.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
Women’s Legal History
The Women’s Legal History website is the home of a searchable database of articles and papers on pioneering women lawyers in the United States. The site contains sections that include the WLH Biography Project and the index and bibliographic notes from “Woman Lawyer: The Trial of Clara Foltz” by Barbara Babcock. In the WLH Biography Project, visitors can look over the life stories of women in the legal profession, such as Agnes Sagebiel, Marge Wagner, and Julia Jennings. There are over 1,000 profiles that visitors can browse alphabetically or search by name, year, ethnicity, or law school. Additionally, the site contains detailed information about Babcock’s recent work, along with media clips related to the subject of women lawyers.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
The Frances Perkins Center
The Frances Perkins Center is named after Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a presidential cabinet. During her time as the U.S. secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Perkins worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of workers across the country. The mission of the Center is to “fulfill the legacy of Frances Perkins…by continuing her work for social and economic justice and preserving for future generations her nationally significant family homestead.” The materials on the site are divided into sections that include Frances Perkins, The Center, Projects, and Virtual Tour. The first section contains a photo gallery of Perkins, along with information about her life and times. In the Center area, visitors can read about the Center’s mission and staff or scan the blog. Finally, the Projects area contains a wonderful area called the Social Security Stories Project. Here, visitors can read stories about how Social Security has impacted generations of individuals and also contribute their own memories and experiences.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
African-American Women: Online Archival Collections
The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University has a wealth of digitized materials related to African American women. This particular collection brings together three noteworthy collections: Elizabeth Johnson Harris: Life Story; Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson: Slave Letters; and Vilet Lester Letter. This last item is particularly noteworthy as it is a very rare item indeed: a letter written by a female slave. The Elizabeth Johnson Harris: A Life Story area brings together the full text of her memories, along with several poems and vignettes published in various newspape rs in her lifetime. She was born in 1867 to parents who had been slaves, and the memoir includes information about her own childhood and the importance of religion and education in her life. Finally, the last section brings together letters written by Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson to their mistresses and other slave family members in Abingdon, Virginia.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
By Popular Demand: “Votes for Women” Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
This remarkable collection brings together a plethora of printed materials related to the struggle for woman suffrage in the United States. Created as part of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, the materials here include photographs of suffrage parades, picketing suffragists, an anti-suffrage display, as well as a number of cartoons. The site includes a special timeline which profiles the long struggle for woman suffrage, through Abigail Adams’ admonition to her husband to “Remember the Ladies” all the way up to the first proposal of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Visitors can browse the subject index for items ranging from Allegories to Women-Political Activity-Washington (D.C.). The site is rounded out by a selected bibliography and information on how to order photographic reproductions.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
Friday Findings
Letters to a Young Madman: A Memoir
Letters to a Young Mad Man
When Paul Gruchow first started putting Letters to a Young Madman together, he wondered how his disjointed journal entries, quotes, and medical research could work to create something coherent and meaningful. Though every entry contains a different experience, a different thought, a quote that Gruchow could relate to, any reader of this book is able to clearly understand the message that Gruchow is sending.
Nichole Meier reviews this memoir of depression, which, she writes, allows readers not only to understand but also to empathize with the author’s experiences.
Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers (review)
In Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers, Roger J. Porter sets out to explore a subgenre of life writing he labels “The Childâs Book of Parental Deception.” In this book, Porter reviews a range of autobiographical narratives written by adult children who seek to discover the secret lives of their fathers. His analysis focuses on the story as well as on the means by which the story is investigated, researched, and constructed.
Early in the book, Porter seeks to distinguish these life stories from other memoirs, claiming they are emancipatory in nature (7) rather than stories written from memory, or by survivors of abuse, or those who are traumatized in some way. He describes these narratives as texts that blur the line between biography and autobiography. Porter does not always seem to agree with his own claim, however, and he frequently refers to the books he reviews as memoirs or puts them in the context of research on memoirs. Later in his book, Porter notes that some of the authors find writing to be therapeutic as they veer between bitterness and reconciliation, affection and resentment.
Female Rock Stars and Addiction in Autobiographies
ABSTRACT
AIM – This article analyses addiction and rehabilitation as described in the autobiographies,memoirs and diaries of famous female rock artists. The article shows how female artists portray rock culture, addiction and causes to addiction. MATERIAL – The data includes 16 autobiographicalbooks published between 1982 and 2010. These books were published first in English. Femaler ock artists are marked as the first authors, and all of the books use first-person narration. METHOD – The analysis relies on thematic qualitative analysis and narratology. Data were encoded for addiction, object of addiction, rehabilitation and type of recovery from addiction. Gender was analysed as a separate category. In addition, narrative strategies used in the books were analysed. RESULTS – Addictions and rehabilitation are prevalent themes in autobiographical rock books written by female authors. Many authors write about their personal experiences of addiction and rehabilitation. Those authors who do not portray their personal problems with alcohol or drugs write about staying sober as a way of coping in the male-dominated rock world. CONCLUSIONS– Rock ’n’ roll mythology is changing. Rock artists no longer celebrate their excesses, but rather write about their negative experiences with alcohol and drugs. Rock narratives by female stars portray social and gendered settings which lead to addiction.
This is a rare instance in which you can read this entire scholarly journal article by Atte Oksanen. If you’ve ever wondered how researchers analyze texts such as memoirs, you’ll find out here.
Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain
The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.
Read about research that many hope will lead to better ways to combat illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Why Confusion Can Be a Good Thing
We all know that confusion doesn’t feel good. Because it seems like an obstacle to learning, we try to arrange educational experiences and training sessions so that learners will encounter as little confusion as possible. But as is so often the case when it comes to learning, our intuitions here are exactly wrong. Scientists have been building a body of evidence over the past few years demonstrating that confusion can lead us to learn more efficiently, more deeply, more lastingly—as long as it’s properly managed.
Annie Murphy Paul explains three ways in which “deliberately induced confusion” can aid in learning.
Friday Findings
50 Years of The Feminine Mystique
AP photo
This week’s 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking work The Feminine Mystique has generated lots of commentary. Here’s a sampling.
The Skeptical Early Reviews of Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’
In truth, The Feminine Mystique‘s 50-year shelf life got off to a somewhat rocky start. While many book critics immediately recognized the potential in Friedan’s book when it was released in 1963, some remained skeptical. Some detractors said it was too alarmist, others said it was too complacent—and one even complained that Friedan went too far in asserting that average girl wouldn’t rather be at home putting cream on her face. That last guy probably has a few regrets.
As these examples illustrate, pioneering work is usually recognized only in retrospect.
‘Anger Boiled Up, and Betty Friedan Was There’: ‘Feminine Mystique’ at 50
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which turns 50 next month, transformed the lives of women across America. In the early ’60s, Friedan, a self-identified homemaker, interviewed fellow Smith graduates for an alumni survey. She noticed an alarming pattern of dissatisfaction. Despite the fact that many of these women had achieved the domestic life they’d wished for—a home in the suburbs complete with modern appliances, children, and a bread-winning husband—they were miserable. It was a “silent problem,” Friedan wrote. “Why should women accept this picture of a half-life, instead of a share in the whole of human destiny?”
In this opinion piece in The New York Times Stephanie Coontz argues that The Feminine Mystique “had the impact it did because it focused on transforming women’s personal consciousness”:
Friedan set out to transform the attitudes of women. Arguing that “the personal is political,” feminists urged women to challenge the assumption, at work and at home, that women should always be the ones who make the coffee, watch over the children, pick up after men and serve the meals.
Over the next 30 years this emphasis on equalizing gender roles at home as well as at work produced a revolutionary transformation in Americans’ attitudes.
Why ‘The Feminine Mystique’ is Still Worth Reading in 2013
Nanette Fondas asserts:
Today, reading this classic feels like sitting down for a long talk with your wise, feminist grandmother to learn her generation’s ideas on how to compose a life that’s meaningful and fruitful. But revisiting the book to understand what Friedan was saying—what exactly she meant by a “feminine mystique”—reveals a logical and passionate argument that’s still relevant today: All people, including women with children, deserve to pursue work that helps fulfill their human potential.
I am a feminist and I’ve never read ‘The Feminine Mystique’ till now
A relative of Betty Friedan finally gets around to reading one of the most important books of feminist thought. Here’s what she found:
When I actually opened the book and started reading, what hit me was Betty’s howl of frustration. It’s primal, and you feel its desperate force on almost every page. God, did she feel trapped among the slipcovers of the suburbs and in the pages of the women’s magazines she wrote for, where big ideas and questions were entirely unwelcome. The only way to escape was to pulverize the image of the “Happy Housewife Heroine” (HHH) who is the title of Chapter 2. Betty’s fiercest critique in this book is of the “mistaken choice” she thinks traditional gender roles forced middle-class women and their husbands to make.
Criticisms of a Classic Abound
Friedan’s “book has been shadowed by its share of critics ever since [its publication], including many otherwise sympathetic scholars who have doggedly chipped away at its own mystique.”
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