Magical Memoir Moments

Former student and student assistant Amy Houser and her mother Mary Lou.

Encountering Borders and Crossing Boundaries: Metaphorically and Literally

It was a big week in the Shenandoah Valley. An international conference. The world premiere of a play. A book talk about Mennonites and Nazism. Preparations for a 24-day trip to Scandinavia. And, of course, daily check-ins to see how baby Lydia and her parents are doing. The theme of the conference, Crossing the Line, applies,…

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Combining Service, Learning, and Memoir: An Intergenerational Approach and Syllabus

Since I am preparing to teach memoir to college students, I’m anticipating a question: How write about a life when it does not yet contain a long timeline with twists and turns in it? There are many solutions to this problem: Memoir thrives on the short view anyway. It is not the chronicle of a…

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