This book explores the rich, diverse opportunities and challenges afforded by research that analyses the stories told by, for and about women. Bringing together feminist scholarship and narrative approaches, it draws on empirical material, social theory and methodological insights to provide examples of feminist narrative studies that make explicit the links between theory and practice. Examining the story as told and using examples of narratives told about childhood sexual abuse, domestic/relationship abuse, motherhood, and seeking asylum, it raises wider issues regarding the role of storytelling for understanding and making sense of women’s lives. This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of women’s studies, feminist and narrative researchers, social policy and practice, sociology, and research methods.

This book presents the research journey involved in sensitively unearthing and re-presenting the lived experience of women casual academics. The author weaves the as yet unvoiced stories of women casual academics with a reflective account of a narrative inquiry process. In doing so, she both critiques and offers an alternative to masculine and traditional academic discourse, and demonstrates the power of imagistic and theatrical communication. The book situates the felt human and post-human experience/s of narrative research alongside the philosophical and theoretical research practices encountered in an arts-informed narrative research project. Thus, the author establishes valuable frameworks for planning, undertaking and evaluating arts-informed narrative research; a growing and vibrant area of education research. This innovative work will be of interest to feminist researchers, teachers and supervisors, as well as students and scholars of women casual academics.

Under the Sign of Hope examines the practices of life history, ethnographic fieldwork, and interpretation of women's narratives, ultimately asserting the importance of self-reflexivity for feminist methodology. Bloom takes the stance that what is critical to research is an ability to analyze the complexities of researcher-participant relationships and the limitations of narrative interpretation.

Written by an international team of experts in the field, the second edition of this popular text considers both the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of narrative research. The authors take the reader from initial decisions about forms of narrative research, through more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. Existing chapters have been updated to reflect changes in the literature and new chapters from eminent narrative scholars in Europe, Australia and the United States have been added on a variety of topics including narratives and embodiment, visual narratives, narratives and storyworlds, new media narratives and Deleuzian perspectives in narrative research. This book will be invaluable for all students, researchers and academics looking to use narrative methods in their own social research.

Discourses and narratives are crucial in how we understand a world of rapid changes. This textbook constitutes a unique introduction to two major influential theoretical and methodological fields - discourse and narrative methods - and examines them in their interrelation. It offers readers an orientation within the broad and contested area of discourse and narrative methods and develops concrete analytical strategies to those who wish to explore both or one of these fields as well as their overlaps. Illustrated with examples from real life and real research, this book: Maps the theoretical influence from poststructuralist, postmodern, postcolonial and feminist ideas on the field of discourse and narrative. Acts as a guide to the most central analytical approaches in discourse and narrative studies supported by concrete examples of analytical strategies. Presents a variety of oral, textual, visual and other ’data’ for the purpose of analyzing discourse and narrative. Offers deeper insight into discourse and narrative methods within three themes of crucial importance for changing global context: media and society, gender and space, and autobiography and life writing. Acts as a helpful guide to situated writing based on concrete workshop exercises, which promotes ethical reflexivity, analytical thinking and creative engagement in the study of discourses and narratives.

This book explores entanglements of power relations and forces of desire in life narratives and visual images. The analysis draws on paintings and archival auto/biographical writings of six fin-de-siècle women artists, who are brought together as narrative personae in a genealogical exploration of the constitution of the female self in art. The author offers an innovative theoretical approach to narrative research by bringing together feminist theories with Foucauldian and DeleuzoGuattarian analytics. The book will be of particular interest for researchers and graduate students in the fields of feminist, narrative and visual studies.

This book offers a novel, detailed and sensitive exploration of women's engagement with feminism. Centred on the themes of generations, hope, emotions and belonging, each chapter attends to the specific and particular practices of 'becoming feminist' via a series of accessible case studies. Adopting a theoretical and methodological focus on narrative and memory, this original and absorbing work analyses the various and complex ways in which feminism and its histories are received and processed by some feminist women today. Its focus on the specificity of experience disrupts overarching narratives of feminism and its histories, whilst acknowledging that such narratives are often used to sustain, defend and maintain a secure feminist identity. In doing so, it develops a growing body of work concerned with the relationships women forge to feminism’s pasts, presents and futures, with a distinct focus on the stories feminist women tell about their lives. It will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, psychosocial studies, gender studies, women's studies and cultural studies.

In this original work, Maria Pia Lara develops a new approach to public sphere theory and a novel understanding of the history of the feminist struggle.

At a time of contested realities and a renewed focus on the power of personal stories, narrative research is as relevant as ever. But while it has been praised for 'giving voice' to individuals and highlighting how they make sense of the social world, critics are starting to question which voices are being heard, or allowed to speak, and which experiences are made to count. Supported by the editors' popular podcast Narrative Now, this interdisciplinary volume addresses timely concerns about representation, power, voice, and the ethics of storytelling. Contributors explore the capacities and limitations of narrative research, and map out new directions for the field while honouring its legacy.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book brings together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, it examines how narrative research is conducted and applied. It operates as a practical introductory guide, basic enough for first-time researchers, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. The authors guide readers through current debates about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts.