Biography

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston Universit

Life without theory: biography as an exemplar of philosophical understanding

This article discusses recent attempts to provide the genre of biography with a philosophical, theoretical foundation and attempts to show that such efforts are fundamentally misguided. Biography is, I argue, a profoundly nontheoretical activity, and this, precisely, makes it philosophically interesting. Instead of looking to philosophy to provide a theory of biography, we should, I maintain, look to biography to provide a crucially important example and model of what Ludwig Wittgenstein called "the kind of understanding that consists in seeing connections." This kind of understanding stands in sharp contrast to the theoretical understanding provided by science and is, Wittgenstein maintained, what we as philosophers are, or should be, striving for

Animal lives

The writer discusses the possibility of writing an animal's biography. It may be too simple to assume that anthropocentrism—a belief in the centrality and superiority of human beings—is the reason why the concept of biography has always been applied uniquely to humans. To write a “life” may not just be to present a series of “facts” but to bear testimony to that individual's capacity to communicate through language the subject's own self-understanding. Using this rationale, the subject of biography is always potentially the subject of autobiography. The exclusion of animals from the Dictionary of National Biography does not just demonstrate the ongoing anthropocentrism of history as a discipline, but it also demonstrates the continuation of a version of human selfhood that is, and always has been, created out of, in exclusion from, and by the naming of animals

Eve: a biography

Norris, Pamela. Eve: a biography. [S.l.]: New York Univ Press, 1999

Ernest Gellner: an intellectual biography

Catherine Hezser finds that John A. Hall’s biography of one of the most prominent social anthropologists of our time provides fascinating reading on issues and debates which are still of utmost importance. Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography. John A. Hall. Verso. 2011. Paperback edition

Journal of African Christian Biography

A publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography with U.S. offices located at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University. This issue focuses on: WOMEN --- 1. Biographies of Kimpa Vita by Norbert Brockman, Mark R. Lipschutz and R. Kent Rasmussen, and Tsimba Mabiala. 2. "The Life and Visions of Krəstos Śämra, a Fifteenth-Century Ethiopian Woman Saint,"--chapter from African Christian Biography: Stories, Lives and Challenges (D. L. Robert, editor) by Wendy Laura Belcher 3. "Queen Njinga and Her Faiths: Religion and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Angola"--chapter from African Christian Biography: Stories, Lives and Challenges (D. L. Robert, editor) by Linda Heywood. 4. Book Notes, by B. Restric

Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 5, no. 2

A publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography with U.S. offices located at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University. This issue focuses on: Women / Bilingual (French): 1. Biography of Émilienne Mboungou-Mouyabi (née Niangui Loubota), Congolese woman pastor, in ENGLISH and in FRENCH; 2. "Recovering the Lives of African Women Leaders in South Africa: The Case of Nokutela Dube" By Heather Hughes, chapter from African Christian Biography: Stories, Lives and Challenges, (D. L. Robert, editor); 3. "Notes on the Life History of the Reverend Canon Professor Emeritus John Samuel Pobee (1937 to 2020)"" by Casely Essamuah.; and, 4. "Theological Publishing and the Future of Christianity in Africa: African Theological Network Press" by Kyama Mugambi. 5. Book Notes, by Beth Restrick

Jesus: a revolutionary biography

Reviewed Book: Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: a revolutionary biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994