Overview

Social media has facilitated the sharing of once isolated testimonies to an extent and with an ease never before possible. The #MeToo movement provides a prime example of how such pooling of individual stories, in large enough numbers, can fuel political movements, fortify a sense of solidarity and community, and compel public reckoning by bringing important issues into mainstream consciousness. In this timely and important study, Helga Lenart-Cheng has uncovered the antecedents of this phenomenon and provided a historical and critical analysis of this seemingly new but in fact deeply rooted tradition. Story Revolutions features a rich variety of case studies, from eighteenth-century memoir collections to contemporary Web 2.0 databases, including memoir contests, digital story-maps, crowd-sourced Covid diaries, and AI-assisted life writing. It spans the Enlightenment, the 1930s, and the twenty-first century—three historical periods marked by a convergence of mass movements and new methods of data collection that led to a boom in activism based in the aggregation and communication of stories. Ultimately, this book offers readers a critical perspective on the concept of community itself, with incisive reflections on what it means to use storytelling to build democracy in the twenty-first century.

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9780813948393

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Reviews

A project of theoretical depth and sophistication, this carefully conceived and rigorously executed study offers a substantial and innovative contribution. The writing is clear and energetic and elucidates an important phenomenon that has not received sufficient attention. By focusing on assemblages and aggregations of life stories, the author illuminates important contemporary cultural, political, and technological trends in the production and consumption of auto/biographical texts. --John D. Zuern, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Author Information

Helga Lenart-Cheng is Associate Professor at St. Mary's College of California.

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