Genealogy

1590 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Anamnesis: Intertextual Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease

by Kirstin Wagner

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020013 - 16 Jun 2017

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4625

This essay develops and performs a theory of intertextual memory; and uses this concept as a heuristic to re-conceptualize identity for people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This work emerges from three key sites of personal and cultural inquiry. At the center is my [...] Read more.

This essay develops and performs a theory of intertextual memory; and uses this concept as a heuristic to re-conceptualize identity for people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This work emerges from three key sites of personal and cultural inquiry. At the center is my engagement with my matrilineal ancestry; which is haunted by the specter of memory loss: my mother’s mother (my Nanny) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in 2002 when she was 73; and my mother was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s in 2012 when she was 51. By telling stories about my mother and my Nanny which rely on intertextual memory; I hope to broaden the poetic space of remembering and to challenge the Western humanistic conception of identity as inherent; atomistic; and highly dependent on successful memory performance. Secondly; I examine the rhetorical discourse circulating Alzheimer’s disease in the popular cultural imaginary; where illness metaphors deleteriously situate the forgetting body within narratives of failure; fear; and loss of personhood. I argue that an intertextual approach to memory performance can help us reimagine Alzheimer’s patients outside the stigmatizing parameters of these broader cultural stories. Lastly; I draw on empirical research related to communication failure in AD in order to consider the ways caregivers might approach Alzheimer’s patients with the kind of linguistic and interactional flexibility subtended by an intertextual approach to identity; in order to forge improved relationships both with Alzheimer’s patients and with the disease itself. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gender’s Influence on Genealogy Narratives)

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157 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Investigating Gender on the Frontier: 19th-Century Crooked Creek Cemetery

by Sandra Schroer and Ellen Jayne Hine

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020012 - 15 Jun 2017

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3859

Abstract

This qualitative case study highlights the work of university students who participated in a service learning component of a sociological research methods course. Their complete documentation and analysis of all 477 gravestones in the abandoned Crooked Creek cemetery provide a cultural snapshot of [...] Read more.

This qualitative case study highlights the work of university students who participated in a service learning component of a sociological research methods course. Their complete documentation and analysis of all 477 gravestones in the abandoned Crooked Creek cemetery provide a cultural snapshot of life in the Western frontier in the 1800s. In contrast to existing literature on the analysis of gender indicators on gravestones, this study finds significant evidence that gender was related to social identity and that indicators of master status exist for both women and men. Furthermore, the significant role of women in the development of a pioneer village is represented in the epitaphs chosen by a woman’s surviving family members. The findings attempt to dispel assumptions that the use of terms such as “wife” and “mother” on gravestones of the period exemplified the lower status of women in relation to men. Implications for genealogical research include rethinking the way researchers consider the role of wife and mother to write more historically situated narratives of family and community histories. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gender’s Influence on Genealogy Narratives)

2890 KiB

Open AccessArticle

That was the Worst Day of My Life: Recrafting Family through Memory, Race, and Rejection in Post-WWII Germany

by Tracey Owens Patton

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020011 - 9 Jun 2017

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 13354

Abstract

This research project is a historical and narrative study of cross-racial, international couplings between Black U.S. servicemen and White German women during WWII and the children who resulted from these relationships. Once pejoratively referred to as “Brown Babies,” or worse, often both the [...] Read more.

This research project is a historical and narrative study of cross-racial, international couplings between Black U.S. servicemen and White German women during WWII and the children who resulted from these relationships. Once pejoratively referred to as “Brown Babies,” or worse, often both the U.S. and German governments collaborated in the destruction of families through forbidding interracial coupling and encouraging White German women to either abort mixed raced babies or give up these children for international adoption in an effort to keep Germany White. Using my own family’s history to show that mixed race children are the dross that needed to be removed from Germany, I employed memory and post-memory as my theoretical framing, coupled with authoethnography, family interviews, and narratives as my methodological tools. Of primary concern is what place Black German children and their mothers were allowed to occupy in the German national imagination and to what extent their individual rights and interests were superseded by the assertion of state interest in managing the German citizenry. Ultimately, it is argued that different tactics of constituting Germanness as homogenously White comes at the expense German women’s rights over their bodies and the exclusion of mixed race Black German children. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gender’s Influence on Genealogy Narratives)

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161 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

What Is Genealogy? Introduction to the Inaugural Issue of Genealogy

by Philip Kretsedemas

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020010 - 5 Jun 2017

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 6960

Abstract

The inaugural issue of Genealogy offers an ambitious selection of essays which provide several answers to the question “What is Genealogy?” Each essay could easily have appeared in a different journal, specializing in philosophy, family studies and communication, race and ethnicity studies, political [...] Read more.

The inaugural issue of Genealogy offers an ambitious selection of essays which provide several answers to the question “What is Genealogy?” Each essay could easily have appeared in a different journal, specializing in philosophy, family studies and communication, race and ethnicity studies, political sociology or the cultural study of science and technology.[...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue What is Genealogy?)

2523 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Foucault’s Darwinian Genealogy

by Marco Solinas

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 9; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020009 - 23 May 2017

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 7356

Abstract

This paper outlines Darwin’s theory of descent with modification in order to show that it is genealogical in a narrow sense, and that from this point of view, it can be understood as one of the basic models and sources—also indirectly via Nietzsche—of [...] Read more.

This paper outlines Darwin’s theory of descent with modification in order to show that it is genealogical in a narrow sense, and that from this point of view, it can be understood as one of the basic models and sources—also indirectly via Nietzsche—of Foucault’s conception of genealogy. Therefore, this essay aims to overcome the impression of a strong opposition to Darwin that arises from Foucault’s critique of the “evolutionistic” research of “origin”—understood as Ursprung and not as Entstehung. By highlighting Darwin’s interpretation of the principles of extinction, divergence of character, and of the many complex contingencies and slight modifications in the becoming of species, this essay shows how his genealogical framework demonstrates an affinity, even if only partially, with Foucault’s genealogy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue What is Genealogy?)

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218 KiB

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Criminal Modus Operandi and Psychoanalysis as Genealogical Evidence

by Stephen B. Hatton

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020008 - 2 Apr 2017

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5637

Abstract

A critical issue in genealogy is proving genealogical identity. Failure to do so often results in generational linkages and entire pedigrees built on fantasy. Correctly separating different individuals and combining records related to the same individual require careful analysis and consideration of evidence [...] Read more.

A critical issue in genealogy is proving genealogical identity. Failure to do so often results in generational linkages and entire pedigrees built on fantasy. Correctly separating different individuals and combining records related to the same individual require careful analysis and consideration of evidence using personal qualities, relations, events, and objects such as places of residence or employment, key dates, occupation, religion, and physical characteristics. This article explores two behavioral identifiers—criminal modus operandi and psychoanalysis. To illustrate the argument that they can serve an important role in establishing identity, it examines the case of John Hatton, a teenaged London thief who was transported to America in 1726. Using a trial transcript and other evidence, the paper argues that criminal modus operandi and psychoanalysis can, where adequate evidence survives, be used to adduce genealogical identity, thus enabling one to combine evidence recorded at different times and across two continents. Full article

181 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Genealogical Relatedness: Geographies of Shared Descent and Difference

by Catherine Nash

Genealogy 2017, 1(2), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1020007 - 30 Mar 2017

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 7424

Abstract

This paper explores genealogy through a focus on what I describe as the idea of genealogical relatedness. This is a model of human relations which emphasizes relationships between people defined through the reckoning of connections based on birth and parentage. I offer a [...] Read more.

This paper explores genealogy through a focus on what I describe as the idea of genealogical relatedness. This is a model of human relations which emphasizes relationships between people defined through the reckoning of connections based on birth and parentage. I offer a geographical analytical framework for exploring both popular genealogy and ideas of genealogical relatedness, shared descent and difference. It is one that both attends to the variety of ways that collective identity is defined or explored through genealogy and is alert to the troubling nature of genealogical categorizations and differentiations especially those which are figured in terms of concepts that seem to be most progressive, including ideas hybridity, diversity, and universal humanity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue What is Genealogy?)

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Genealogy, Volume 1, Issue 2 (June 2017) – 7 articles

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