Life-Writing Methods Workshop

Tuesday 6th June (7th week)

2pm-3.30pm, in the Buttery

Join OCLW Visiting Scholars Jackie Uí Chionna and Elissa Rodkey to find out more about the methods they use in their work, and to discuss your own life-writing projects. Each speaker will deliver a 20-minute paper, followed by Q&A and discussion.

The building blocks of biography writing

Jackie Uí Chionna will discuss her work writing Queen of Codes, using archives, objects and oral history to construct a biography.

Dr. Jackie Uí Chionna teaches history of the University of Galway in the west of Ireland. An experienced oral historian, she has published two biographies, and one oral history memoir of a university, which featured interviews with those who taught, studied, or worked there.

Delight and the details: Messiness and imagination in writing Neither Rat Nor Robot.

Elissa Rodkey will discuss her archival adventures and choices in researching her forthcoming biography of psychologist Magda Arnold (1903-2002). Elissa will explore the idea of a desire-based research process, one guided by what the researcher finds fascinating about their topic and that allows for flexibility and even messiness in the process of capturing often-ephemeral historical sources. The talk will also touch on the role of the imagination in reconstructing vanished worlds (whether pre-Vatican II American Catholicism, the lively immigrant inhabitants of a gritty Berkshiresmill town, or masculine Cold War psychology).

Dr. Elissa Rodkey is a historian of women and gender in psychology and an associate professor at Crandall University in New Brunswick, Canada. Most recently she has written about the importance of intellectual community for women in science and on the exclusionary practices of two elite all-male psychology societies.

This event will take place in the Buttery, Wolfson College (accessibility information).OCLW advises caution by wearing masks and not attending if you are feeling unwell.

Click here to register (free) via Eventbrite.