What is this project about?
This is my emeritus project that I have worked on full time since late 2016. It falls in two parts:
1) A practical part, in which I (see → versions of my memoir), in which I:
- experiment with different ways of accounting for my life in texts and images
- go through documents in my home archive, interview old friends and colleagues, and actively recall my memories
- accumulate bits and pieces of my earlier life in episodic accounts, anecdotes, narratives, lists, images, and visualizations
2) An analytical part (see → approaches), in which I:
- reflect on different approaches to and methods for the study of autobiography and memoirs of relevance for my own memoir writing
- browse (and sometimes read) the vast and variegated literature on the genre of autobiography, memory, graceful aging, etc
- discuss aspects of these readings in research seminars and on social media. As a consequence I’m changing, adding and deleting the pages on this site as the project proceeds
- publish scholarly articles, hold seminars and post on social media, including this → blog
And why do I call it a ‘project’? See discussion of the terms ‘project’, ‘investigation’, ‘study’ etc.) → why ‘project’?
My youngest son Jussi was 4 years old when I began working on this project