The genre of biography represents a long debated tradition in historical writing. With the rise of social history, gender history, and “history from below”, personal sources (i.e. ego-documents) were accepted into historical writing, but the perspective of micro history also introduced ordinary people and their everyday as important in and of themselves without the need to attach them to a grand historical narrative. 

This seminar will explore some of the unresolved issues involved with writing a biography. Should the life story of an individual be used to cast light on larger historical events or should the historical subjects be allowed to stand for themselves? What, if anything, can the life story of an individual, a couple, or a family say about social and cultural dynamics? Also, we will ask if the same rules apply to writers of grand historical narratives and writers of biographies. How much should the researcher insert himself/herself into the writing of a biography? Is it, for example, possible to write an academic historical biography of one’s own family?
The presentations will focus on European life stories of groups, individuals, and family members, while taking into account the methodological and ethical debates around the writing of biography as a genre.

Program
9-10
Elaine Chalus: 'My Dearest Tussy': Family and Navy in the Fremantle Papers, 1801-1814

10-11
Rósa Magnúsdóttir: Love in the Time of Communism: An Icelandic Married Couple and Twentieth Century Transnational History

11-12
Helle Møller Sigh: Private letters to a midshipman on board hsm defence. From research to exhibition

12-13 Lunch

13-14
Deborah Simonton: How to use biography/autobiography/ego-docs in teaching

14-15 Short papers from graduate and post-graduate students
Marie Bønløkke Spejlborg: 'and he went over to the Danes who were his kinsmen': Collective biographies as a way of exploring eleventh-century contacts
Susanne Brink Ladegaard: The origin of the early modern bourgeoise familylife. A history told from the the correspondance between father and son.
Sally Schlosser Schmidt: Korsetter og kødhakkere – genstandsbiografien som indgang til den kulturhistoriske fortælling
Maria Kudsk Borghus: Bonderøven

15-15:30 Coffee

15.30-17
Karin Lützen: "Hvordan jeg gennem detektivarbejdet med min mors hemmeligholdte jødiske baggrund fik fortalt en større historie om jødiske indvandringsmiljøer i Paris."