Reviews and Reports

Amy Carlson, Reading Mediated Life Narratives: Auto/Biographical Agency in the Book, Museum, Social Media, and Archives

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.13.42204

Keywords:

book review

Abstract

In Reading Mediated Life Narratives: Auto/Biographical Agency in the Book, Museum, Social Media, and Archives, Amy Carlson, leveraging her background as a librarian, delves into the nuanced mediations influencing life narratives, with keen awareness of (im)materiality, (re)formatting, text versions, and the reading experience. Expanding upon Anna Poletti’s insights, Carlson highlights the critical importance of both materiality and mediation in the analysis of (self-)life inscriptions. She emphasizes embodiment as a pivotal concern in life writing scholarship, stressing the significance of understanding auto/biographical texts as objects. By delving into Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska’s concept of ‘original technicity’ (2012), which asserts that humans have always relied on external technologies to navigate life, Carlson articulates how human experiences are inherently mediated.

Author Biography

Iana Nikitenko, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Iana Nikitenko is a PhD fellow at the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She works on the FWO-funded project Radiobiographies. Innovations in Genre and Medium (1945–2020), focusing on English and German radio productions. Her research interests include literary and media studies, life writing and radio studies.

Published

2024-10-01

Issue

Vol. 13 (2024): EJLW

Section

Reviews and Reports

Copyright (c) 2024 Iana Nikitenko

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.