Journals
Magazine:
BIOGRAPHY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY QUARTERLY
ISSN:
0162-4962
Year:
2022
Vol:
45
N°:
3
Pp:
374 - 377
Book review for the journal. Guest contribution commissioned by editors of the journal.
Magazine:
HUMAN ARENAS
ISSN:
2522-5804
Year:
2021
Vol:
4
N°:
3
Pp:
366 - 378
Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We can only access those memories via mediation, by listening to our relatives who were there, whose stories we become witnesses to, and which ultimately become our own collective witnessing. The remembrance of the Spanish Civil War passed on to us in this manner is a contested legacy, a complex combination of affects and mediated memories, coming from offlin - as in conversations with our elders - and online - such as archival footage - resources. Experiencing war firsthand left indelible marks in our forebearers¿ minds. Now the elderly must face this violent ¿war¿ and ¿postwar¿ rhetoric with the potential retraumatization it may cause. Not capable to understand why average and government officials alike call for heroes to resist and fight the crisis, a discourse heavily imbued with emotions and battlefront references does little to assuage citizens¿ fears. Perpetual news reels on the number of dead per day worsen the psychological strain of a person in lockdown, akin to that of prison inmates, more so if that person endured an actual war and its aftermath. What might be done to lessen such harmful impacts? How can we change the narrative and make it more humane?
Magazine:
BIOGRAPHY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY QUARTERLY
ISSN:
0162-4962
Year:
2021
Vol:
44
N°:
1
Pp:
147 - 154
Magazine:
NARRATIVE
ISSN:
1063-3685
Year:
2021
Vol:
29
N°:
2
Pp:
210 - 223
Among the most pressing matters dominating the public sphere is the refugee crisis, but the news does not present readers/audiences with a story one can easily relate to. The opposite may be said of human rights activists who turn to life narrative as a counterpart to the dehumanising practices at the heart of much of public discourse. This essay looks at the major role of agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in mediating refugees' narratives. It builds on a key interview obtained with that organisation's former Chief Communications Officer, Melissa Fleming, whose role epitomizes the humanitarian narrative of today. Social average and their affordances play an important role in distributing the message and allowing for private lives to enter the public sphere. Refugees' mediated narratives offer a significant counternarrative to the mainstream average attempts to erase or flatten out individual stories. However, attention must be paid to the problematics surrounding the ethics of mediation, especially in the case of life narratives of human suffering and vulnerable others. Common challenges to mediated narratives are, among others, appropriation and commoditization, questioning who tells whose story, how, and why. The very idea of empathy is subject to criticism. Though admittedly fraught with pitfalls, testimonial narratives have the potential to shake people's consciences and to effect social change.
Magazine:
PROSE STUDIES
ISSN:
1743-9426
Year:
2020
Vol:
41
N°:
3
Pp:
349 - 366
Climate change and the concerns it raises for the environment and all those inhabiting planet earth, human and nonhuman alike, have prompted waves of activism since the last decades of the twentieth century. Over the last few years, however, a novel form of activism has emerged, apparently led by children and youth from all over the world. This article studies how one of its most prominent leaders, Greta Thunberg, and her climate activism may be read as a life-writing project. Drawing on traditions of social movements and testimony, rights discourse, rhetoric and strong emotions are strategically deployed to generate affective and effective engagement and action. The self that is in the making in Thunberg's audiovisual and written life-writing texts is arguably a testimonial 'I' to lay bare injustice. Her self-construction hinges upon the denunciation of broader systemic causes than mere lack of attention to the climate crisis.
Magazine:
BIOGRAPHY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY QUARTERLY
ISSN:
0162-4962
Year:
2020
Vol:
43
N°:
1
Pp:
158- 164
A B trend this year in Spanish life writing has been to give voice to those silenced. Following in the footsteps of a long-standing tradition of testimonial life writing worldwide, multiple lifewriting works in Spain have been turning to issues of "voice" and "silence". It is little surprise that some of these stories feature women after the global impact of the #MeToo movement. However, the trends I identified in my contribution to this feature last year (Martínez García) have persisted. Conflict continues to permeate life narratives in Spain, and as will be seen in what follows, both politics and journalism are among the most prevalent fields of study from which life writing comes.
Magazine:
RILCE. JOURNAL OF HISPANIC PHILOLOGY
ISSN:
0213-2370
Year:
2019
Vol:
35
N°:
2
Pp:
718 - 721
Magazine:
BIOGRAPHY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY QUARTERLY
ISSN:
0162-4962
Year:
2019
Vol:
42
N°:
1
Pp:
147 - 153
Magazine:
JOURNAL OF WRITING IN CREATIVE PRACTICE
ISSN:
1753-5190
Year:
2019
Vol:
12
N°:
1-2
Pp:
201 - 217
This article explores the storytelling practices employed in Malala Yousafzai's life-writing texts as examples of collaboration in the co-construction of an activist diary. It tracks the narrative 'I' and its movements in and out of the plural pronoun 'we' as it moves across communities and embraces the legacy of testimonial accounts by both former and contemporary human rights activists. In line with that tradition, it is necessary to include the stories of other victimized people in the life-writing text, so that the result advocates for change on a sociopolitical, not just individual, level. The fact that the texts are mediated by editors, translators, co-authors and collaborators every step of the way paves the collaborative path Global South young women activists traverse, a path fraught with potential pitfalls and ethical difficulties for them and for scholars alike.
Magazine:
STATE CRIME
ISSN:
2046-6056
Year:
2019
Vol:
8
N°:
1
Pp:
59 - 79
China's policy of returning North Koreans without a previous screening of their particular cases goes against international agreements, such as the Refugee Convention and Protocol. Multiple organisations have discussed this issue, quoting from legal documents as well as anonymized interviews. What this essay aims to do is present autobiographical texts that deal with the same topic but from a staff point of view. The
conditions of North Koreans in China, relived in testimonial accounts, deserve special attention because of their first-person account of victimization. This essay situates North Korean women's memoirs within the tradition of life writing for testimonial purposes,
aimed at raising awareness of the critical absence of human rights in the context of North Korean refugees, and the ongoing atrocities committed against girls and women.
Magazine:
JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES
ISSN:
1576-6357
Year:
2019
Vol:
17
Pgs:
253 - 275
This essay demonstrates the effectiveness of human rights life narratives in garnering global support through their appeal to empathy. I focus on Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai's autobiographical texts and their impact on lives outside the written pages, which is first and foremost of an empathic nature. The essay pays special attention to her childhood blog and her teenage autobiography, looking at the narrative strategies employed in both. Autobiographical texts are never neutral, enabling people to see themselves under a new light, spurring them to act. The delicate balance between witnessing and involvement hangs on the creation of an emotional bond.
Magazine:
PROSE STUDIES
ISSN:
0144-0357
Year:
2018
Vol:
39
N°:
2-3
Pp:
132 - 149
The war in Syria has been covered extensively in the average. Yet, it seems the conflict had all but been forgotten when the story of Bana Alabed surfaced on Twitter. Deploying digital average for human rights activism is not new, particularly in the context of the Arab Spring and subsequent upheaval in the Middle East, online and offline. This article explores how Bana Alabed¿s Twitter account, managed by her mother, has been instrumental in a change of views and actions on the part of the Global North. It looks at the ways in which the complex universal image of the suffering child is harnessed to denounce violence but, intriguingly, showcasing the problems of instability in the region and political trends. Other stories from Aleppo had been told. However, the trope of the girl in need permeates humanitarian discourse and, wielding emotions strategically, makes ethical claims on readers and audiences alike.
Magazine:
LIFE WRITING
ISSN:
1448-4528
Year:
2018
Vol:
15
N°:
4
Pp:
487 - 503
The peculiar format of the TED talk lends itself particularly well to human rights advocacy campaigns. Advocates worldwide need to present a self in consonance with the ideals they uphold. A TED talk, characterised by condensing information in a manner conducive to capturing the interest of an international audience and in just over 15 to 20 minutes on average, is an opportunity for activists to represent - and identify - themselves with a very simple and distinct memorable message. A determining factor of TED talks is the memoir detail the speakers exploit in a sort of rags-to-riches narrative, where overcoming difficulty and finding success are recurrent tropes. This article explores two case studies - two North Korean young women defectors and their TED/TEDx talks. Reading their TED talks as examples of human rights life writing shows an interesting move on the part of activists towards online platforms that may allow for immediacy and reach. The technological affordances TED provides, such as the interactive mechanisms that facilitate comments and replies, match the activist diary of reaching wider audiences, informing the public of the transgressions they denounce. These rights activists¿ self-presentation acts are shaped by an emotional discourse to gain the support they seek.
Magazine:
FOLKLORE
ISSN:
0015-587X
Year:
2017
Vol:
128
N°:
2
Pp:
175-188
Oral traditions resort to formulas not only for memorability, but also to transmit meaning of partner-historical import. In the case of Child ballads, she kilted her kirtle' and she took her mantle her about' serve to construct an image of powerful women. Thus, at least in some ballads in English, the stereotype of passive women breaks down.
Magazine:
CLCWEB - COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND CULTURE
ISSN:
1481-4374
Year:
2017
Vol:
19
N°:
3
Pp:
1 - 9
Magazine:
A/B: AUTO/BIOGRAPHY STUDIES
ISSN:
0967-5507
Year:
2017
Vol:
32
N°:
3
Pp:
587-602
Magazine:
BIOETHICS NOTEBOOKS
ISSN:
1132-1989
Year:
2016
Vol:
27
N°:
91
Pp:
445 - 451
Magazine:
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES
ISSN:
1833-1882
Year:
2010
Vol:
5
N°:
1
Pp:
115-126
There are four main social characters depicted in ballads and romances: the lady, the nobleman, the poor, and the servant. Usually, the mechanism by which the lady becomes socially prominent are her clothes, described as much richer and prettier than those of her companions. A similar mechanism is the use of a uniformed retinue, among which she will surely be the center of attention. On the other hand, she is almost always described as showing rich ornaments: hair accessories, golden pins, rings, ...
Those symbols of status are commonly associated with the beauty of the person wearing them. The nobleman is also described through his clothes, which leads us to believe that the concept of ¿conspicuous consumption¿ plays a very important role in the oral traditions at hand. At the same time, we may propose the psychological function of clothing. Thus, the uniformed retinue are forced, because of their clothes, to conform to the role they are given, losing their own individuality.
The poor, due to their appearance, are generally mistrusted.
As for the servants, the way they dress is entirely influenced by the social status of their master.
All in all, we may safely conclude that clothing has a symbolic value through which the individual asserts his or her power.
Books
Place of Edition:
New York
publishing house:
BERGHAHN BOOKS
Year:
2022
DESCRIPTION
The 21st century has witnessed some of the largest human migrations in history. Europe in particular has seen a major influx of refugees, redefining notions of borders and national identity. This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading international scholars of migration from perspectives as varied as literature, linguistics, area and cultural studies, average and communication, visual arts, and film studies. Together, they offer innovative interpretations of migrants and contemporary migration to Europe, enriching today¿s political and average landscape, and engaging with the ongoing discussion on forced mobility and rights of both extra-European migrants and European citizens.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave MacMillan
Year:
2020
This book is a timely study of young women's life writing as a form of human rights activism. It focuses on six young women who suffered human rights violations when they were girls and have gone on to become activists through life writing: Malala Yousafzai, Hyeonseo Lee, Yeonmi Park, Bana Alabed, Nujeen Mustafa, and Nadia Murad. Their ongoing life-writing projects diverge to some extent, but all share several B features: they claim a testimonial collective voice, they deploy rights discourse, they excite humanitarian emotions, they link up their context-bound plight with bigger social justice causes, and they use English as their vehicle of self-expression and self-construction. This strategic use of English is of vital importance, as it has brought them together as icons in the public sphere within the last six years. New Forms of Self-Narration is the first ever attempt to explore all these activists' life-writing texts side by side, encompassing both the written and the audiovisual material, online and offline, and taking all texts as belonging to a unique, single, though multifaceted, project.
Book chapters
Book:
Representing 21st-century migration in Europe: Performing borders, identities and texts.
Place of Edition:
New York
publishing house:
BERGHAHN BOOKS
Year:
2022
Pgs:
224-232
ABSTRACT: Contemporary migration to Europe has been subject of discussion in recent years and across a multiplicity of venues. This chapter provides an overview of the diverse means deployed to represent migration as border-crossing, via aesthetic and figurative language, performative acts, identity and social construction, across different average and for a multiplicity of audiences. It recaps main themes and methodologies, some key research results, and emphasizes the multidisciplinary and transnational dimension of the study. Importantly, it suggests what novel conceptual directions for representing migration in the context of Europe have been forged through this book and where this might lead to.
KEYWORDS: migration; borders; construction; othering; crisis; agency.
Book:
Representing 21st-century migration in Europe: Performing borders, identities and texts.
Place of Edition:
New York
publishing house:
BERGHAHN BOOKS
Year:
2022
Pgs:
89 - 105
This chapter addresses testimonial practices as a way to contest mainstream narratives on the often called 'migrant crisis', a label they both resist and deploy to specific activist uses. In reclaiming their right to speak and represent themselves, border-crossers' self-experiential stories reconstruct the phenomenon. In the performative act of a border-crossing 'I' in the making, a newly empowered 'migrant self' emerges. The process is exemplified by Syrian refugee activist Nujeen Mustafa's TED talk and memoir, in which she rejects the b/orders others may seek to impose on her.
KEYWORDS: migrant self; performative acts; testimony; border crossing; activism; TED talks; memoir.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
77 - 91
This chapter examines Bana Alabed¿s harnessing Twitter to construct an activist self. It analyzes the intriguing ways technological and affective affordances made it possible for a 7-year-old Syrian girl to report from a war zone. Alabed has evolved past the trope of innocent suffering child typical of human rights narratives, and on to a discourse of peace and fraternity which has awarded her several prizes. Mediation¿and the role her mother has played¿as well as imagery to convey trauma should be further addressed and problematized. The chapter closes with a reflection on names. Like Malala, Bana is mainly known by just her first name. Getting to know these girls on a first-name basis is crucial for the degree of empathizing that may be reached.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
133 - 140
This book reveals the ways in which young women resort to social average as well as traditional average as part of their ongoing life-writing project. The phenomenon of virality is explored to cast light on the affordances that facilitate synergies among significant social and political actors on the global stage. It does not offer a completely positive view of the digital, but states the possibilities that the combination of online and offline methods offers and opens the door to future explorations in novel forms of narrating the self. New Forms of Self-Narration addresses the strategic use of names, labeling and tagging. Each chapter underscores the multiplicity of approaches to life writing and mediation these young women activists take, showcasing relevant trends in twenty-first-century life writing.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
39 - 58
This chapter looks at how Hyeonseo Lee imbricates staff memory and collective suffering in her life-writing activism. She has become a spokesperson for North Koreans at both national and international levels, giving public talks where she explains hardships she endured and witnessed. In 2013, TED.com released Lee¿s talk. The instability of US-DPRK relations at the time made it an instant sensation, which proves life writing is inseparable from politics. The interplay of offline and online self-construction expands the notion of what used to be separate realms but have become one entangled narrative. Her memoir profited from the viral TED talk and vice versa. Deploying social average for human rights activism, Lee¿s life writing succeeds in raising awareness for a collective via multimodal means of self-expression.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
1 - 18
This book is a timely study of young women¿s life writing as a form of human rights activism. It focuses on six young women who suffered human rights violations when they were girls and have gone on to become activists through life writing: Malala Yousafzai, Hyeonseo Lee, Yeonmi Park, Bana Alabed, Nujeen Mustafa, and Nadia Murad. Their ongoing life-writing projects diverge to some extent, but all share several B features: they claim a testimonial collective voice, they deploy rights discourse, they excite humanitarian emotions, they link up their context-bound plight with bigger social justice causes, and they use English as their vehicle of self-expression and self-construction. This strategic use of English is of vital importance, as it has brought them together as icons in the public sphere within the last six years. New Forms of Self-Narration is the first ever attempt to explore all these activists¿ life-writing texts side by side, encompassing both the written and the audiovisual material, online and offline, and taking all texts as belonging to a unique, single, though multifaceted, project.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
19 - 38
Building on academic publications that have tried to assess Malala Yousafzai¿s life-writing project in its entirety, this chapter presents each of her life-writing texts as an example of collaborative testimonial narrative. Moving away from an objective, neutral tone, her life writing tends to rely on emotional language and various other discursive strategies aimed at sustaining interest over time. Since Malala Yousafzai started her self-narration when she was 11, technology and traditional average have gone hand in hand. Her appropriation of the hashtag launched under her name proved vital in her reconstruction of an activist self. Yet, the presence of a co-author, either hinted at or made explicit, can be traced throughout all her life-writing texts, from her first blog to her last book on displacement.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
111 - 131
The final chapter closes as a coda to the first chapter in the book. If Malala Yousafzai received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, four years later, in 2018, it was Nadia Murad¿s turn. This chapter offers a similar approach to the one taken in the first chapter and elsewhere, which is to read the activist¿s texts side by side, and assess the narrative self-representation and self-construction processes in both written and audiovisual average, in traditional and innovative forms. Though there were prior memoirs by women who escaped ISIS recounting the horror of victimization and sexual exploitation, Murad¿s gained worldwide recognition faster perhaps aided by a multiplicity of other factors, namely the ubiquitous deployment of her life-writing texts¿including a recent documentary¿on and offline.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
93 - 110
This chapter is the perfect companion to the preceding one, as it features the case of a Syrian girl who also left the country under strenuous circumstances and relocated as a refugee elsewhere. Both life-writing projects may be read side by side to gauge the strategies at work by these two activists whose competing title as ¿the girl from Aleppo¿ is at stake. Instead of precluding each other¿s testimony, their voices denounce the situation in Syria and the individual and collective ramifications of leaving their country behind. Born with cerebral palsy, Nujeen Mustafa¿s journey into Europe was featured by mainstream average. Nujeen¿also a household name¿is most famous for her public speeches advocating for the need to move beyond labeling people as numbers, migrants, refugees.
Book:
New Forms of Self-Narration: Young Women, Life Writing and Human Rights.
Place of Edition:
Cham
publishing house:
Palgrave Macmillan
Year:
2020
Pgs:
59 - 76
This chapter is a companion to the previous one, since Lee and Park come from the very same village in North Korea and their life-writing projects capitalize on the notion of a North Korean girl who escapes, travels to China and onto a Global North final destination. Girlhood is maximized by both, but their self-narration differs in other ways. Though Park fits the girl trope of humanitarian discourse, she strives to move past the category of victim and redefine herself as a survivor. The remediation/curation of Park¿s self on social average platforms¿but also offline¿is assessed to gauge the impact those may have had in crafting a public persona, a celebrity activist, as she has been enrolled in causes beyond Korean activism, namely feminism.
Book:
Conference proceedings : the future of education : 8th conference edition, Florence, Italy 28-29 June 2018.
Place of Edition:
Padua
publishing house:
libreriauniversitaria.it
Year:
2018
Ppgs:
349 - 352
Book:
On the move: Glancing Backwards to Build a Future in English Studies.
Place of Edition:
Bilbao
publishing house:
University of Deusto
Year:
2016
Ppgs:
127-32
Book:
Inhabiting the goal Visual: Contemporary Performance Themes.
Place of Edition:
Oxford
publishing house:
Inter-Disciplinary Press
Year:
2016
Ppgs:
115-128
Oral poetry has always been associated with performance. That is not to say some way along the process of creating/re-creating and singing a ballad, the songs can also bear printing. However, the role of the performer is crucial for any scholar to be able to classify a particular poem as 'oral.' 1 The fact that costume may be considered performative and meaningful has recently taken on vital relevance, as contemporary research demonstrates, e.g. Peter McNeil's revision of Roland Barthes's views on the semiotics of fashion. 2 Before that, some authors had already claimed that clothes might be a mechanism through which we 'fabricate our selves.' 3 At the same time, discussing ritual and ritualism in the context of fashion has also become a mechanism through which we 'fabricate our selves. 3 At the same time, discussing ritual usually entails an anthropological approach, in the sense that orality makes use of oral and gestural signs. 4 In this chapter, I will argue that dress-related ritual in the ballad universe is of outmost importance and worth a detailed account. Taking a look at how these oral traditions are permeated by the symbolism of such rites, I claim that there must be a connection between now and then. Thus, if the poems are still being sung, so should the rituals be alive. In order to test my hypothesis, I will employ partner-cultural semiotics together with New Historicist readings, offering an encompassing overview that aims to be multidisciplinary. The way that characters perform dress-related rituals affects what the audience perceives, which could significantly vary depending on the geographical context. Quite tellingly, the listeners, far from being passive recipients, in turn influence the ballad, having an actual historical impact on the narrative. Undoubtedly, the performativity of dress is here inexorably linked to the story-making process.
