Free Download Narrative Objects (Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception) by Tatiana Argounova-Low, Alison K. Brown
English | June 25, 2025 | ISBN: 1138315338 | 226 pages | PDF | 15 Mb
Narrative Objects is concerned with the conversations that arise when artists, scholars, and museum practitioners come together with historic objects. Its focus is a unique mammoth ivory model of yhyakh – the annual celebration of the Sakha people in the Russian Far East – which has been in the collection of the British Museum since 1867. Almost 150 years later, the model was loaned to the National Arts Museum of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) for exhibition and public engagement. As Sakha people revisit past histories and reconstitute cultural knowledge following decades of Soviet rule, this book considers narratives generated by the return of the model which speak to wider concerns in anthropology, material culture studies, and history about how knowledge is both suppressed and engaged with. The book also explores how art can be a focus for cultural pride, how skilled practices are entwined with oral histories, and how historic objects can contribute to wider processes of cultural revival. The chapters draw on fieldwork and museum and archival research in Sakha Sire, Paris and London.

Free Download Transgression, Stylistic Variation and Narrative Discourse in the Twentieth Century Novel By Marie-Anne Visoi
2014 | 146 Pages | ISBN: 1443853925 | PDF | 1 MB
This book offers a valuable contribution to the practice of literary criticism and cultural studies by seeking to explore "transgression" as a literary theme. Based on the analyses of six representative twentieth century novels, it deals with the fictional representation of various transgressive acts, from murder and incest to forbidden love affairs and adultery. A detailed consideration of major reader-response theories establishes a useful context for the textual analyses, as the readers are encouraged to integrate knowledge about style, narrative structure, and formal interpretive strategies with knowledge about social norms and moral values embedded in each text. Focusing on the evolving relationship between text and reader, the book exposes the potential of narrative strategies revealed in the act of narrating a story in an unconventional manner. "Broken" narratives, "unreliable narrators", and "self-referentiality" are only some of the features discussed in the book with the aim of stimulating the readers to reflect on the narrative complexity of the twentieth century novel and to question their reading expectations. Designed for use in small and large classes organized by Literature, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Departments in colleges and universities around the world, this systematic, in-depth novel study aims to increase the students’ capacity to interpret challenging narrative texts, appreciate the aesthetic value of world literature, and experience the pleasure of reading beyond the limits of their own field.

Free Download The Passage from Youth to Adulthood : Narrative and Cultural Thresholds By Pierluca Birindelli
2014 | 187 Pages | ISBN: 0761863893 | PDF | 1 MB
The Passage from Youth to Adulthood explores a society unanchored from culturally endorsed rites of passage, in which young people and adults appear to build their identities within a culture of dependency. In this book, author Pierluca Birindelli interviews Italian young adults still living with their parents, and focuses on how those individuals view the bedroom and the objects therein. From there, he analyzes self-narrations and longer autobiographies written by university students, measuring his impressions against sociological, psychological, and anthropological literature. Birindelli explores the paradigm of what he calls "intergenerational collusion," in which fathers and sons are playing to the same script, heedless of the common good, the other, and the future. Finally, integrating the experience of young Americans abroad sparks transcultural reflections about the concept of play and the authenticity of social performance.

Free Download Local Contextual Influences on Teaching : Narrative Insights from ESL and EFL Professionals By Patrick Ng; Esther Boucher-Yip
2014 | 196 Pages | ISBN: 1443864056 | PDF | 1 MB
This volume is a collection of personal narratives and research findings by English language (ESL/EFL) teachers who found themselves, in one way or another, teaching in various contexts all over the world. The central theme throughout these narratives is how contextual factors played a role in their approach to language teaching in different ways. The contributors reflect on their practices and provide an engaging discussion about how they deal with curriculum and classroom organization issues within the local context. Readers can expect to learn and understand how ESL/EFL teachers in this volume exercise their agency in teaching in a language classroom. These teachers, through their own unique stories and research findings, reflect on how they responded to local contextual factors such as the learning culture, national and school policies, personal beliefs and attitudes towards pedagogy, the sociolinguistic context of teaching, the school culture, and the wider sociopolitical context in which learning and teaching takes place. Since the narrative approach has been placed center stage in teacher education as a method and an objective of inquiry, the contributors adopt the narrative form to reflect and discuss their instructional practice.