Biography Across the Digitized Globe

Essays in Honour of Hans Renders
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-72669-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 4, 302 Seiten, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 237 mm, Gewicht: 610 g

Reihe: Biography Studies

This volume is dedicated to Professor Hans Renders, founder of the Biography Institute of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Throughout his academic career, Renders witnessed a reflexive turn in historical research: biographers became more open about the limitations of their sources, and the subjective nature of their selection. Over this same period, however, the availability of digital sources has increased exponentially, which has profound implications for biographical research and the transnational framework used to approach the genre. Through its thirteen thought-provoking essays, this work seeks to make an intervention in Biography Studies by bringing the well-developed reflexive tradition to bear on the pressing challenge of proliferating digitized sources.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Veltman, David

Meister, Daniel R.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Foreword: a Celebration of Professor Hans Renders

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Turn Every Electronic Page? Biographers Confront the Digital Turn David Veltman and Daniel R. Meister

Part 1: Theory – Transnational Microhistory

1 Microhistorical Approaches and Playing with the Scales of History: a Microbiography of Historians’ Biographical Methods Melanie Nolan

2 Microhistory and Everyday Life Experience in a Biographical Writing: Representation in History Sigurður Gylfi Magnu´sson

3 The Scandalous Abbe´ Rioust: the Multiple Careers of an Exiled (Ex-)Priest in the Era of Revolutions Jeffrey Tyssens

4 Transnationally Informed Biography: Finding Abraham Kuyper in the Dissemination of a South African Christian-Nationalist Jacques Pienaar

Part 2: Archives – Bits and Traces

5 Twisting: Loss, Illness, and Dying in Words

What I Have Taken from Hans Renders Marlene Kadar

6 Facts and Signs of Life: Bits, Biographies, Life Writing, Biobits, and the Environment Craig Howes

7 “Creating Science from One’s Own Biography”: Networks and Clues in the Archival Afterlife of Helmuth Plessner David Veltman

8 Traces and Clues in a Fairytale: Research Based on a “Weird” Historical Source Jana Wohlmuth Markupova´

Part 3: Practice – Teaching and Writing Biography

9 The Golden Age Is Over: AI and the Future of Biography Nigel Hamilton

10 Dissecting “A Funny Thing”: Taste, Biography, and the Case of Nanne Tepper Lodewijk Verduin

11 In Retrospective: the Concept of Subject Agency According to Virginia Woolf’s “The New Biography” Maryam Thirriard

Conclusion: Biography across Borders: Broadening Biography Studies Daniel R. Meister

Index

Über Autor(innen)

David Veltman, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Groningen and he and works as collection specialist at the Special Collections department, University Library of Groningen, the Netherlands.

Daniel R. Meister, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at St. Thomas University and an Archivist (Private Sector Records) at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, in Canada.