Merging one of the oldest techniques in the social sciences with one of the newest, the author of this text re-examines the biographical and autobiographical genres. He combines elements of post-modernism and interpretive social science to explore the inherent weaknesses in traditional biographies, and to outline new ways in which biographies should be conceptualized. The work is illustrated with numerous examples of the author's own biographical work and biographies of the past.
Author Biography
Norman K. Denzin is Professor of Communications, Sociology and Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Editor of Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Journal and The Sociological Quarterly, Dr. Denzin is the author of numerous books. He is the recipient of two awards from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction: The Cooley Award in 1988, and the George Herbert Mead Award for lifetime contribution to the study of human behavior in 1997.
