No-Drama Obama: Personal Memoirs, Bestsellers, and Qualitative Research: A Review

Personal memoirs and life histories are forms of qualitative research that from time to time appear on bestsellers lists. These forms of research detail the authors’ experiences of living and reflecting upon their everyday lives—lives that may be unique in some sense or lives made unique by the richness of the interplay of living, reflecting, and writing. In this review, I make the case for viewing moments in all lives as worthy of the development of personal memoir or life history and for using memoir as a way of generating takeaways or lessons learned. I review Elyn Saks’ (2007) memoir and bestseller about her life with schizophrenia, The Center Cannot Hold, and the British actor, author, and comedian, Stephen Fry’s 2006 documentary about bipolar disorder Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive. Both are examples of life histories that provide an abundance of opportunities for learning about what we might otherwise never know

A Review of Qualitative Research Groups in Web 2.0 Social Networking Communities: Prepare to Be Amused, Inspired, and Even Blown Away

The presence of qualitative research groups on Web 2.0 social networking applications, like Facebook, has continued to grow. These groups are self organizing systems of people interested in particular aspects of qualitative research. Many of these qualitative research groups have companion internet websites and some also have companion YouTube channels, creating a very strong cyber presence. While visitors to these groups are encouraged to evaluate their quality for themselves, in general, the groups provide accessibility and good information for practitioners, students, and teachers of qualitative research alike. Most importantly, a number of these online qualitative research groups can serve as incubators for innovation for both the group members and visitors to the groups

“The Slow Creep of Complacency”: Ongoing Challenges for Democracies Seeking to Detain Terrorism Suspects

This article assesses shifting presumptions by three democracies -- the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom – all of whom appear to have permanently adopted some alterations to their detention practices for certain terrorism-related cases since the attacks of September 11, 2001 (hereinafter “9/11”). A review of executive, legislative and judicial outcomes in these three countries often reveals an ongoing tension between the judiciary and the other branches of government, with the judiciary frequently citing to traditional constitutional principles to reassert the primacy of individual liberties and fair trial guarantees. In spite of such rulings, however, the advance towards some system of preventive detention and abridged judicial process for terrorism suspects continues, in various forms, in each of these countries. It appears that this ongoing tension between some national high courts and political branches of government may be based, in part, on the judicial role of safeguarding constitutional protections, while the other branches have increasingly become reliant upon a form of discourse that may be at odds with those principles, and much of which was developed in a time of perceived emergency. The premises on which detention practices have been altered may not have been fully assessed in the years after 9/11 by those in policy-making positions. This ongoing tension and continuing uncertainty as to the status of certain constitutional protections may have larger implications for the viability of long-standing constitutional norms, as well as for larger criminal-justice standards, and those implications must be further examined before any such changes do, indeed, become permanent

Flash Research Writing

In this workshop we will use the principals of flash fiction writing and apply them to research writing as a vehicle for getting your research writing well under way. Your writing censor will be sent out for ice cream or a drink while we break down the elements of a research study into multiple components that can be described in 100 words or less. In this workshop you will write up each of the components of your study using flash writing principals that we will demonstrate. At the end of the workshop you will have a quality product to take home that includes a complete story of each of the sections of your research project that you are currently working on. The atmosphere in this workshop will be supportive, creative, and high standards only. You\u27re going to love it. Guaranteed

B.S. Johnson and Maureen Duffy: Aspiring Writers: A Conversation with Maureen Duffy

Maureen Duffy and B.S. Johnson met at King’s College London in 1956 when they both enrolled to read for a degree in English Literature. They became friends and colleagues through their contributions to Lucifer, the college literary magazine and the wider University of London poetry scene. They later joined forces in the Writer’s Action Group and campaigned for public lending rights for authors. Maureen kindly agreed to be interviewed about her relationship with Johnson, but in addition to this her interview sheds light on the socio-political context of British post-war writing. Maureen was born in 1933 in Worthing, Sussex and came to prominence in 1962 with the autobiographical novel That’s How It Was. Although mainly known for her poetry, her prose work has received critical and popular acclaim. Gor Saga (1981) was dramatised and broadcast by the BBC in 1988 as First Born, a three-part mini-series vehicle for Charles Dance. She is also the author of 16 plays for stage, television and radio. Maureen is well known as a humanist and gay rights activist and for her work championing the financial and legal interests of writers. She is currently the President of the Authors Licensing and Copyright Society, and a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature. This interview took place in London in July 2013 and first appeared in the inaugural edition of B.S.J: The B. S. Johnson Journal