Fear of Theory: Towards a New Theoretical Justification of Biography (Biography Studies, 3) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004498540 ISBN 13: 9789004498549

Publisher: Brill, 2021

Synopsis

Listen to the podcast here.
Recent academic historiography has seen a profusion of theoretical perspectives on biography, both analytical and descriptive. Yet many biographers still fear ‘theory’ as antithetical to accessible narration of real lives.

This volume presents eighteen essays by more than a dozen scholars and practitioners from Australia, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Iceland, and the United States who seek to banish such fear. Writing with candor, wide experience and familiarity with modern teaching, they examine the riches greeting the biographer willing to think more deeply about biography: its inner workings and rationale in a world still hungry for fact and truth.

Contributors are: Nigel Hamilton, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Emma McEwin, Melanie Nolan, Kerstin Maria Pahl, Eric Palmen, Hans Renders, Carl Rollyson, David T. Roth, István M. Szijártó, Jeffrey Tyssens, and David Veltman.

See inside the book.

About this title

About the Author

Hans Renders is Professor in History and Theory of Biography at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). He has written two biographies and has published on biographical theory in various international journals. He is Editor-in-Chief of the series Biography Studies.

David Veltman has a PhD from the University of Groningen. His dissertation, a biography of the artist Felix de Boeck, was written at the Biography Institute. He has published before in Biography. An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004498540
• ISBN 13: 9789004498549
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Renders Hans, Veltman David