ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES
  • 9.1 (Fall 2022)
    • 9.1 Articles >
      • Mark Houston, "Riding Out of Abstraction: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Re-materialization of ​Social Justice Rhetoric in “The Sacred and the Superfund”" (9.1)
      • Ryan McIlvain, ""You Get to Decide What to Worship but Not What's Good": Rereading 'This Is Water'" (9.1)
      • Quincy Gray McMichael, "Laboring toward Leisure: The Characterization of Work in ​Maine’s Back-to-the-Land Memoirs" (9.1)
      • Aggie Stewart, "Bringing Dark Events to Light: ​Emotional Pacing in the Trauma Narrative" (9.1)
      • Emma Winsor Wood, "A Lovely Woman Tapers Off into a Fish: Monstrosity in Montaigne’s Essais" (9.1)
    • 9.1 Conversations >
      • Philip Newman Lawton, "Rousseau's Wandering Mind" (9.1)
      • Claire Salinda, "Bodily Dissociation as a Female Coping Mechanism in ​The Shapeless Unease, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, and Girlhood" (9.1)
      • Hannah White, "“Which sounds bad and maybe was”: A Study of Narrative in Beth Nguyen’s “Apparent”" (9.1)
    • 9.1 Pedagogy >
      • Jessica Handler, "Your Turn" (9.1)
      • Sonya Huber, "Expressing Anger as a Positive Choice" (9.1)
      • Kozbi Simmons, "Literacy as Emancipation" (9.1)
      • Wally Suphap, "Writing and Teaching the Polemic" (9.1)
  • Archives
    • Journal Index >
      • Author Index
      • Subject Index
    • 1.1 (Fall 2014) >
      • Editor's Note
      • 1.1 Articles >
        • Sarah Heston, "Critical Memoir: A Recovery From Codes" (1.1)
        • Andy Harper, "The Joke's On Me: The Role of Self-Deprecating Humor in Personal Narrative" (1.1)
        • Ned Stuckey-French, "Our Queer Little Hybrid Thing" (1.1)
        • Brian Nerney, "John McCarten’s ‘Irish Sketches’: ​The New Yorker’s ‘Other Ireland’ in the Early Years of the Troubles, 1968-1974" (1.1)
        • Wendy Fontaine, "Where Memory Fails, Writing Prevails: Using Fallacies of Memory to Create Effective Memoir" (1.1)
        • Scott Russell Morris, "The Idle Hours of Charles Doss, or ​The Essay As Freedom and Leisure" (1.1)
      • 1.1 Conversations >
        • Donald Morrill, "An Industrious Enchantment" (1.1)
        • Sonya Huber, "Amazon Constellations" (1.1)
        • Derek Hinckley, "Fun Home: Change and Tradition in Graphic Memoir" (1.1)
        • Interview with Melanie Hoffert
        • Interview with Kelly Daniels
      • 1.1 Pedagogy >
        • Robert Brooke, "Teaching: 'Rhetoric: The Essay'" (1.1)
        • Richard Louth, "In Brief: Autobiography and Life Writing" (1.1)
    • 1.2 (Spring 2015) >
      • 1.2 Articles >
        • Kelly Harwood, "Then and Now: A Study of Time Control in ​Scott Russell Sanders' 'Under the Influence'" (1.2)
        • Diana Wilson, "Laces in the Corset: Structures of Poetry and Prose that Bind the Lyric Essay" (1.2)
        • Randy Fertel, "A Taste For Chaos: Creative Nonfiction as Improvisation" (1.2)
        • Lynn Z. Bloom, "Why the Worst Trips are the Best: The Comic Travails of Geoffrey Wolff & Jonathan Franzen" (1.2)
        • Ingrid Sagor, "What Lies Beside Gold" (1.2)
        • Catherine K. Buni, "Ego, Trip: On Self-Construction—and Destruction—in Creative Nonfiction" (1.2)
      • 1.2 Conversations >
        • Doug Carlson, "Paul Gruchow and Brian Turner: Two Memoirs Go Cubistic" (1.2)
        • Patrick Madden, "Aliased Essayists" (1.2)
        • Beth Slattery, "Hello to All That" (1.2)
        • Interview with Michael Martone (1.2)
      • Spotlight >
        • Richard Louth, "The New Orleans Writing Marathon and the Writing World" (1.2)
        • Kelly Lock-McMillen, "Journey to the Center of a Writer's Block" (1.2)
        • Jeff Grinvalds, "Bringing It Back Home: The NOWM in My Classroom" (1.2)
        • Susan Martens, "Finding My Nonfiction Pedagogy Muse at the NOWM" (1.2)
      • 1.2 Pedagogy >
        • Steven Church, "The Blue Guide Project: Fresno" (1.2)
        • Stephanie Vanderslice, "From Wordstar to the Blogosphere and Beyond: ​A Digital Literacy and Teaching Narrative (Epiphany Included)" (1.2)
        • Jessica McCaughey, "That Snow Simply Didn’t Fall: How (and Why) to Frame the Personal Essay as a Critical Inquiry into Memory in the First-Year Writing Classroom" (1.2)
    • 2.1 (Fall 2015) >
      • Editor's Note2.1
      • 2.1 Articles >
        • Daniel Nester, "Straddling the Working Class Memoir" (2.1)
        • Sarah M. Wells, "The Memoir Inside the Essay Collection: ​Jo Ann Beard's Boys of My Youth" (2.1)
        • Chris Harding Thornton, "Ted Kooser's "Hands": On Amobae, Empathy, and Poetic Prose" (2.1)
        • Steven Harvey & Ana Maria Spagna, "The Essay in Parts" (2.1)
        • Megan Culhane Galbraith, "Animals as Aperture: How Three Essayists Use Animals to Convey Meaning and Emotion" (2.1)
      • 2.1 Conversations >
        • Barrie Jean Borich, "Deep Portrait: On the Atmosphere of Nonfiction Character" (2.1)
        • Tim Bascom, "As I See It: Art and the Personal Essay" (2.1)
        • Adrian Koesters, "Because I Said So: Language Creation in Memoir" (2.1)
        • Interview with Simmons Buntin (2.1)
        • Mike Puican, "Narrative Disruption in Memoir" (2.1)
      • 1.2 Pedagogy >
        • Bernice M. Olivas, "Politics of Identity in the Essay Tradition" (2.1)
        • Ioanna Opidee, "Essaying Tragedy" (2.1)
        • Crystal N. Fodrey, "Teaching CNF Writing to College Students: A Snapshot of CNF Pedagogical Scholarship" (2.1)
        • W. Scott Olsen, "Teaching Adventure, Exploration and Risk" (2.1)
        • Christian Exoo & Sydney Fallon, "Using CNF to Teach the Realities of Sexual Assault to ​First Responders: An Annotated Bibliography" (2.1)
    • Special Conference Issue
    • 2.2 (Spring 2016) >
      • 2.2 Articles >
        • Micah McCrary, "A Legacy of Whiteness: Reading and Teaching Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land" (2.2)
        • Marco Wilkinson, "Self-Speaking World" (2.2)
        • Miles Harvey, "We Are All Travel Writers, We Are All Blind" (2.2)
        • Ashley Anderson, "Playing with the Essay: Cognitive Pattern Play in Ander Monson and Susan Sontag" (2.2)
        • Lawrence Evan Dotson, "Persona in Progression: ​A Look at Creative Nonfiction Literature in Civil Rights and Rap" (2.2)
      • 2.2 Conversations >
        • Julie Platt, "What Our Work is For: ​The Perils and Possibilities of Arts-Based Research" (2.2)
        • William Bradley, "On the Pleasure of Hazlitt" (2.2)
        • Jie Liu, "​'Thirteen Canada Geese': On the Video Essay" (2.2)
        • Stacy Murison, "​Memoir as Sympathy: Our Desire to be Understood" (2.2)
      • 2.2 Pedagogy >
        • Stephanie Guedet, "​Feeling Human Again: Toward a Pedagogy of Radical Empathy" (2.2)
        • DeMisty Bellinger-Delfield, "Exhibiting Speculation in Nonfiction: Teaching 'What He Took'" (2.2)
        • Gail Folkins, "Straight from the Source: ​Primary Research and the Personality Profile" (2.2)
    • 3.1 (Fall 2016) >
      • 3.1 Articles >
        • Chelsey Clammer, "Discovering the (W)hole Story: On Fragments, Narrative, and Identity in the Embodied Essay" (3.1)
        • Sarah Einstein, "'The Self-ish Genre': Questions of Authorial Selfhood and Ethics in ​First Person Creative Nonfiction" (3.1)
        • Elizabeth Paul, "​Seeing in Embraces" (3.1)
        • Jennifer M. Dean, "Sentiment, Not Sentimentality" (3.1)
      • 3.1 Conversations >
        • Interview with Robert Atwan (3.1)
        • Jody Keisner, "'Did I Miss a Key Point?': ​A Study of Repetition in Joan Didion’s Blue Nights" (3.1)
        • Julija Sukys, "In Praise of Slim Volumes: Big Book, Big Evil" (3.1)
        • Lynn Z. Bloom, "​The Great American Potluck Party" (3.1)
        • Jenny Spinner, "​The Best American Essays Series as (Partial) Essay History" (3.1)
      • 3.1 Pedagogy >
        • Heath Diehl, "​The Photo Essay: The Search for Meaning" (3.1)
        • Sonya Huber, "​James Baldwin: Nonfiction of a Native Son" (3.1)
        • Christian Exoo, "Using CNF to Teach the Realities of ​Intimate Partner Violence to First Responders: An Annotated Bibliography" (3.1)
        • John Proctor, "Teachin’ BAE: A New Reclamation of Research and Critical Thought" (3.1)
        • Richard Gilbert, "Classics Lite: On Teaching the Shorter, Magazine Versions of James Baldwin's 'Notes of a Native Son' and ​Jonathan Lethem's 'The Beards'" (3.1)
        • Dawn Duncan & Micaela Gerhardt, "The Power of Words to Build Bridges of Empathy" (3.1)
    • 3.2 (Spring 2017) >
      • 3.2 Articles >
        • Jennifer Lang, "When Worlds Collide: ​Writers Exploring Their Personal Narrative in Context" (3.2)
        • Creighton Nicholas Brown, "Educational Archipelago: Alternative Knowledges and the Production of Docile Bodies in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place and Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis" (3.2)
        • Nicola Waldron, "Containing the Chaos: On Spiral Structure and the Creation of Ironic Distance in Memoir" (3.2)
        • Charles Green, "Remaking Relations: ​Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates Beyond James Baldwin" (3.2)
        • Joey Franklin, "Facts into Truths: Henry David Thoreau and the Role of Hard Facts in ​Creative Nonfiction" (3.2)
      • 3.2 Conversations >
        • Thomas Larson, "What I Am Not Yet, I Am" (3.2)
        • Amanda Ake, "Vulnerability and the Page: Chloe Caldwell’s I’ll Tell You In Person"​ (3.2)
        • "Interview with Gail Griffin" (3.2)
        • Alysia Sawchyn, "On Best American Essays 1989" (3.2)
      • 3.2 Pedagogy >
        • D. Shane Combs, "Go Craft Yourself: Conflict, Meaning, and Immediacies Through ​J. Cole’s “Let Nas Down” (3.2)
        • Michael Ranellone, "Brothers, Keepers, Students: John Edgar Wideman Inside and Outside of Prison" (3.2)
        • Emma Howes & Christian Smith, ""You have to listen very hard”: Contemplative Reading, Lectio Divina, and ​Social Justice in the Classroom" (3.2)
        • Megan Brown, "The Beautiful Struggle: ​Teaching the Productivity of Failure in CNF Courses" (3.2)
    • 4.1 (Fall 2017) >
      • Editor's Note
      • 4.1 Articles >
        • Jennifer Case, "Place Studies: Theory and Practice in Environmental Nonfiction"
        • Bob Cowser, Jr., "Soldiers, Home: Genre & the American Postwar Story from Hemingway to O'Brien & then Wolff"
        • Sam Chiarelli, "Audience as Participant: The Role of Personal Perspective in Contemporary Nature Writing"
        • Kate Dusto, "Reconstructing Blank Spots and Smudges: How Postmodern Moves Imitate Memory in Mary Karr's The Liars' Club"
        • Joanna Eleftheriou, "Is Genre Ever New? Theorizing the Lyric Essay in its Historical Context"
        • Harriet Hustis, ""The Only Survival, The Only Meaning": ​The Structural Integrity of Thornton Wilder's Bridge in John Hersey's Hiroshima"
      • 4.1 Conversations >
        • Taylor Brorby, "​On 'Dawn and Mary'"
        • Steven Harvey, "​From 'Leap'"
        • J. Drew Lanham, "​On 'Joyas Voladoras'"
        • Patrick Madden, "On 'His Last Game'"
        • Ana Maria Spagna, "On 'How We Wrestle is Who We Are'"
      • 4.1 Pedagogy >
        • Jacqueline Doyle, "Shuffling the Cards: ​I Think Back Through Judith Ortiz Cofer"
        • Amy E. Robillard, "Children Die No Matter How Hard We Try: What the Personal Essay Teaches Us About Reading"
    • 4.2 (Spring 2018) >
      • 4.2 Articles >
        • Megan Brown, "Testimonies, Investigations, and Meditations: ​Telling Tales of Violence in Memoir"
        • Corinna Cook, "Documentation and Myth: On Daniel Janke's How People Got Fire"
        • Michael W. Cox, "Privileging the Sentence: David Foster Wallace’s Writing Process for “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s”
        • Sarah Pape, "“Artistically Seeing”: Visual Art & the Gestures of Creative Nonfiction"
        • Annie Penfield, "Moving Towards What is Alive: ​The Power of the Sentence to Transform"
        • Keri Stevenson, "Partnership, Not Dominion: ​Resistance to Decay in the Falconry Memoir"
      • 4.2 Conversations >
        • Interview with Jericho Parms (4.2)
        • "Containing the Hidden Lives of Ordinary Things: A Conversation with Seven Authors"
        • Amy Monticello, "The New Greek Chorus: Collective Characters in Creative Nonfiction"
        • Stacy Murison, "David Foster Wallace's 'Ticket to the Fair'"
        • Emery Ross, "Toward a Craft of Disclosure: Risk, Shame, & Confession in the Harrowing Essay"
      • 4.2 Pedagogy >
        • Sonya Huber, "Field Notes for a Vulnerable & Immersed Narrator" (4.2)
        • W. Scott Olsen, "In Other Words" (4.2)
    • 5.1 (Fall 2018) >
      • 5.1 Articles >
        • Emily W. Blacker, "Ending the Endless: The Art of Ending Personal Essays" (5.1)
        • Marya Hornbacher, ""The World is Not Vague": Nonfiction and the Urgency of Fact" (5.1)
        • Rachel May, "The Pen and the Needle: ​ Intersections of Text and Textile in and as Nonfiction" (5.1)
        • Jen Soriano, "Multiplicity from the Margins: The Expansive Truth of Intersectional Form" (5.1)
      • 5.1 Conversations >
        • Matthew Ferrence, "In Praise of In Praise of Shadows: Toward a Structure of Reverse Momentum" (5.1)
        • John Proctor, "Nothing Out of Something: Diagramming Sentences of Oppression" (5.1)
        • Alysia Sawchyn, "Essaying the World: ​On Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions" (5.1)
        • Vivian Wagner, "Crafting Digression: Interactivity and Gamification in Creative Nonfiction" (5.1)
        • Nicole Walker, "On Beauty" (5.1)
      • 5.1 Spotlight >
        • Philip Graham, "The Shadow Knows (5.1)
        • Miles Harvey, "The Two Inmates: ​Research in Creative Nonfiction and the Power of “Outer Feeling”" (5.1)
        • Tim Hillegonds, "Making Fresh" (5.1)
        • Michele Morano, "Creating Meaning Through Structure" (5.1)
      • 5.1 Pedagogy >
        • Meghan Buckley, "[Creative] Nonfiction Novella: Teaching Postcolonial Life Writing and the ​Hybrid Genre of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place" (5.1)
        • Edvige Giunta, "Memoir as Cross-Cultural Practice in Italian American Studies" (5.1)
        • Jody Keisner, "Gender Identity in Personal Writing: Contextualizing the Syllabi" (5.1)
        • Terry Ann Thaxton, "Workshop Wild" (5.1)
        • Amanda Wray, "​Contesting Traditions: Oral History in Creative Writing Pedagogy" (5.1)
    • 5.2 (Spring 2019) >
      • 5.2 Articles >
        • Nina Boutsikaris, "On Very Short Books, Miniatures, and Other Becomings" (5.2)
        • Kay Sohini, "The Graphic Memoir as a Transitional Object: ​ Narrativizing the Self in Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?" (5.2)
        • Kelly Weber, ""We are the Poem": Structural Fissures and Levels in ​Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Conversations >
        • Sam Cha, "​Unbearable Splendor: Against "Hybrid" Genre; Against Genre" (5.2)
        • Rachel Cochran, "Infection in “The Hour of Freedom”: Containment and Contamination in Philip Kennicott’s “Smuggler”" (5.2)
        • Katharine Coles, "​If a Body" (5.2)
        • A.M. Larks, "Still Playing the Girl" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Spotlight >
        • Charles Green, "In Praise of Navel Gazing: An Ars Umbilica" (5.2)
        • Sarah Kruse, "​The Essay: Landscape, Failure, and Ordinary’s Other" (5.2)
        • Desirae Matherly, "Something More Than This" (5.2)
        • Susan Olding, "Unruly Pupil" (5.2)
        • Jane Silcott, "Essaying Vanity" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Tribute to Louise DeSalvo >
        • Julija Sukys, "One Mother to Another: Remembering Louise DeSalvo (1942—2018)" (5.2)
        • Nancy Caronia and Edvige Giunta, "The Essential Louise DeSalvo Reading List" (5.2)
        • Nancy Caronia and Edvige Giunta, "From the Personal Edge: Beginning to Remember Louise DeSalvo" (5.2)
        • Richard Hoffman, "DeSalvo Tribute, IAM Books, Boston" (5.2)
        • Peter Covino, "Getting It Right – Homage for Louise DeSalvo" (5.2)
        • Mary Jo Bona, "Pedagogy of the Liberated and Louise DeSalvo’s Gifts" (5.2)
        • Joshua Fausty, "The Shared Richness of Life Itself" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Pedagogy >
        • Ashley Anderson, "Teaching Experimental Structures through Objects and ​John McPhee’s 'The Search for Marvin Gardens'" (5.2)
        • Trisha Brady, "Negotiating Linguistic Borderlands, Valuing Linguistic Diversity, and Incorporating Border Pedagogy in a College Composition Classroom" (5.2)
        • Kim Hensley Owens, "Writing Health and Disability: Two Problem-Based Composition Assignments" (5.2)
        • Reshmi Mukherjee, "Threads: From the Refugee Crisis: Creative Nonfiction and Critical Pedagogy" (5.2)
        • Susan M. Stabile, "Architectures of Revision" (5.2)
    • 6.1 (Fall 2019) >
      • 6.1 Articles >
        • Lynn Z. Bloom, "The Slippery Slope: ​Ideals and Ethical Issues in High Altitude Climbing Narratives" (6.1)
        • Tanya Bomsta, "The Performance of Epistemic Agency of the ​Autobiographical Subject in Terry Tempest Williams’s When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice" (6.1)
        • Lorna Hummel, "Querying and Queering Caregiving: Reading Bodies Othered by Illness via Porochista Khakpour’s Sick: A Memoir" (6.1)
        • Laura Valeri, "Tell Tale Interviews: Lessons in True-Life Trauma Narratives Gleaned from ​Jennifer Fox’s The Tale" (6.1)
        • Arianne Zwartjes​, "Under the Skin: An Exploration of Autotheory" (6.1)
      • 6.1 Conversations >
        • Tracy Floreani, "​"Sewing and Telling": On Textile as Story" (6.1)
        • Tessa Fontaine, "The Limits of Perception: Trust Techniques in Nonfiction" (6.1)
        • Patrick Madden, "​Once More to 'His Last Game'" (6.1) >
          • Brian Doyle, "Twice More to the Lake" (6.1)
        • Randon Billings Noble, "The Sitting" (6.1)
        • Donna Steiner, "Serving Size: On Hunger and Delight" (6.1)
        • Natalie Villacorta, "Autofiction: Rightly Shaped for Woman’s Use" (6.1)
      • 6.1 Tribute to Ned Stuckey-French >
        • Marcia Aldrich, "The Book Reviewer" (6.1)
        • Bob Cowser, "Meeting Bobby Kennedy" (6.1)
        • Sonya Huber, "Working and Trying" (6.1)
        • Carl H. Klaus, "On Ned Stuckey-French and Essayists on the Essay" (6.1)
        • Robert Root, "On The American Essay in the American Century" (6.1)
      • 6.1 Pedagogy >
        • John Currie, "​The Naïve Narrator in Student-Authored Environmental Writing" (6.1)
        • Steven Harvey, "The Humble Essayist's Paragraph of the Week: A Discipline of the Heart and Mind" (6.1)
        • Reagan Nail Henderson, "Make Me Care!: Creating Digital Narratives in the Composition Classroom" (6.1)
        • Abriana Jetté, "Making Meaning: Authority, Authorship, and the Introduction to Creative Writing Syllabus" (6.1)
        • Jessie Male, "Teaching Lucy Grealy’s “Mirrorings” and the Importance of Disability Studies Pedagogy in Composition Classrooms" (6.1)
        • Wendy Ryden, "Liminally True: Creative Nonfiction as Transformative Thirdspace" (6.1)
    • 6.2 (Spring 2020) >
      • Guest Editor's Note to the Special Issue
      • 6.2 Articles >
        • Maral Aktokmakyan, "Revisioning Gendered Reality in ​Armenian Women’s Life Writing of the Post-Genocidal Era: Zaruhi Kalemkearian’s From the Path of My Life"
        • Manisha Basu, "Regimes of Reality: ​Of Contemporary Indian Nonfiction and its Free Men"
        • Stefanie El Madawi, "Telling Tales: Bearing Witness in Jennifer Fox’s The Tale"
        • Inna Sukhenko and Anastasia Ulanowicz, "Narrative, Nonfiction, and the Nuclear Other: Western Representations of Chernobyl in the Works of Adam Higginbotham, Serhii Plokhy, and Kate Brown"
      • 6.2 Conversations >
        • Leonora Anyango-Kivuva, "Daughter(s) of Rubanga: An Author, a Student, and Other Stories in Between"
        • Victoria Brown, "How We Write When We Write About Life: Caribbean Nonfiction Resisting the Voyeur"
        • David Griffith, "Wrecking the Disimagination Machine"
        • Stacey Waite, "Coming Out With the Truth"
      • Tribute to Michael Steinberg >
        • Jessica Handler, "Notes on Mike Steinberg"
        • Joe Mackall, "Remembering Mike Steinberg: On the Diamond and at the Desk"
        • Laura Julier, "Making Space"
      • 6.2 Pedagogy >
        • Jens Lloyd, "Truthful Inadequacies: Teaching the Rhetorical Spark of Bashō’s Travel Sketches"
        • George H. Jensen, "Situating Scenes: Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life”
        • Gregory Stephens, "Footnotes from the ‘Margins’: Outcomes-based Literary Nonfiction Pedagogy in Puerto Rico"
    • 7.1 (Fall 2020) >
      • 7.1 Articles >
        • Jo-Anne Berelowitz, "Mourning and Melancholia in Memoir" (Assay 7.1)
        • Carlos Cunha, "On the Chronicle" (Assay 7.1)
        • Bruce Owens Grimm, "Haunted Memoir" (Assay 7.1)
        • Colleen Hennessy, "Irish Motherhood in Irish Nonfiction: Abortion and Agency" (Assay 7.1)
        • James Perrin Warren, "Underland: Reading with Robert Macfarlane" (Assay 7.1)
      • 7.1 Conversations >
        • Alex Brostoff, ""What are we going to do with our proximity, baby!?" ​ A Reply in Multiples of The Hundreds" (Assay 7.1)
        • Steven Harvey, "Lyric Memory: A Guide to the Mnemonics of Nonfiction" (Assay 7.1)
        • Lisa Low, "Proleptic Strategies in Race-Based Essays: Jordan K. Thomas, Rita Banerjee, and Durga Chew-Bose" (Assay 7.1)
        • Nicole Walker, "The Concrete Poetry of Ander Monson’s Essays" (Assay 7.1)
      • 7.1 Pedagogy >
        • Audrey T. Heffers, "Positionality and Experience in the Creative Nonfiction Classroom" (Assay 7.1)
        • James McAdams, "Ars Poetica, Ars Media, Ars COVID-19: Creative Writing in the Medical Classroom" (Assay 7.1)
        • Freesia McKee, "Feedback as Fan Letter" (Assay 7.1)
        • Anthony Moll, "Teaching and Writing True Stories Through ​Feminist, Womanist and Black Feminist Epistemologies" (Assay 7.1)
        • Jill Stukenberg, "“Inspiration in the Drop of Ink”: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Observations in Introduction to Creative Writing" (Assay 7.1)
    • 7.2 (Spring 2021) >
      • 7.2 Articles >
        • Whitney Brown, "Melting Ice and Disappointing Whale Hunts: A Climate-Focused Review of Contemporary Travel Writing" (Assay 7.2)
        • George Estreich, "Ross Gay’s Logics of Delight" (Assay 7.2)
        • Wes Jamison, "'You Are Absent': The Pronoun of Address in Nonfiction" (Assay 7.2)
        • Zachary Ostraff, "The Lyric Essay as a Form of Counterpoetics" (Assay 7.2)
        • Kara Zivin, "Interrogating Patterns: Meandering, Spiraling, and Exploding through ​The Two Kinds of Decay" (Assay 7.2)
      • 7.2 Conversations >
        • Sarah Minor
        • David Shields
      • 7.2 Pedagogy >
        • Megan Baxter, "On Teaching Brian Doyle’s “Leap” to Students Born After 9/11" (Assay 7.2)
        • Jennifer Case, "'Toward a New, Broader Perspective': Place-Based Pedagogy and the Narrative Interview"
        • Kelly K. Ferguson, "Cribbing Palpatine’s Syllabus: Or, What Professoring for the Evil Empire Taught Me ​About Instructional Design" (Assay 7.2)
        • Jennifer Pullen, "Seeking Joy in the Classroom: Nature Writing in 2020" (Assay 7.2)
    • 8.1 (Fall 2021) >
      • 8.1 Articles >
        • Allison Ellis, "Nonfiction Ghost Hunting" (Assay 8.1)
        • Lisa Levy, "We Are All Modern: Exploring the Vagaries of Consciousness in 20th & 21st Century Biography and Life Writing" (Assay 8.1)
        • Ashley Espinoza, "A las Mujeres: Hybrid Identities in Latina Memoir" (Assay 8.1)
        • Cherie Nelson, "The Slippery Self: Intertextuality in Lauren Slater’s Lying" (Assay 8.1)
        • Amie Souza Reilly, "Reading the Gaps: On Women’s Nonfiction and Page Space" (Assay 8.1)
      • 8.1 Conversations >
        • Amy Bowers, "The Elegiac Chalkboard in Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter”" (Assay 8.1)
        • Theresa Goenner, "​The Mania of Language: Robert Vivian's Dervish Essay" (Assay 8.1)
        • Kathryn Nuernberger, "Writing Women’s Histories" (Assay 8.1)
        • Louisa McCullough, "The Case for In-Person Conversation" (Assay 8.1)
        • Kat Moore, "Rupture in Time (and Language): Hybridity in Kathy Acker’s Essays" (Assay 8.1)
      • 8.1 Pedagogy >
        • Mike Catron, "There’s No Such Thing as Too Much of Jason Sheehan’s “There’s No Such Thing As Too Much Barbecue”: ​A Pedagogical Discussion" (Assay 8.1)
        • Brooke Covington, "Ars Media: A Toolkit for Narrative Medicine in Writing Classrooms" (Assay 8.1)
        • W. Scott Olsen, "​A Desire for Stories" (Assay 8.1)
        • C.S. Weisenthal, "​Seed Stories: Pitched into the Digital Archive" (Assay 8.1)
    • 8.2 (Spring 2022) >
      • 8.2 Articles >
        • Barrie Jean Borich, "Radical Surprise: The Subversive Art of the Uncertain," (8.2)
        • George Estreich, "Feeling Seen: Blind Man’s Bluff, Memoir, and the Sighted Reader" (8.2)
        • Kristina Gaddy, "When Action is Too Much and Not Enough: A Study of Mode in Narrative Journalism" (8.2)
        • Marya Hornbacher, "Solitude Narratives: Towards a Future of the Form" (8.2)
        • Margot Kotler, "Susan Sontag, Lorraine Hansberry, and the ​Politics of Queer Biography " (8.2)
      • 8.2 Conversations >
        • Michael W. Cox , "On Two Published Versions of Joan Didion’s “Marrying Absurd” (8.2)
        • Hugh Martin, "No Cheap Realizations: On Kathryn Rhett’s “Confinements” (8.2)
      • 8.2 Pedagogy >
        • Liesel Hamilton, "How I Wish I’d Taught Frederick Douglass: An Examination of the Books and Conversations We Have in Classrooms" (8.2)
        • Audrey T. Heffers, "In the Room Where it Happens: Accessibility, Equity, and the Creative Writing Classroom" (8.2)
        • Daniel Nester, "Joan Didion and Aldous Huxley’s Three Poles" (8.2)
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ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES
6.2

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Stefanie El Madawi 
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Telling Tales: Bearing Witness in Jennifer Fox’s The Tale



When violence is part of “what happened”, then testimony must be part of “what’s next.”
Leigh Gilmore, “Testimony”
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​As an award-winning screenwriter, director, cinematographer and producer, Jennifer Fox has made a career of bearing witness. Fox won the Grand Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival with her debut project Beirut: The Last Home Movie (1988), with her wealth of subsequent work amassing numerous prestigious accolades in the years since. As someone who is familiar with both sides of the camera lens, Fox is well versed in the dialogic relationship that film invites, having turned the camera upon herself in the curation of the documentary film series Flying Confessions of a Free Woman (2006): a collaborative, relational memoir project that bears witness to “modern female life” around the world (Fox in Bussel). In witnessing the testimonies of other women whilst making Flying Confessions, and rediscovering an essay she wrote as a child, Fox was compelled to reevaluate a relationship from her past, which brought to the fore a traumatic personal truth. Fox’s film explores the realization of repressed child sexual abuse in her most recent film, The Tale (2018), which repurposes her documentary acuity in the construction of an introspective, narrative film with extremely sensitive and provocative content. In her cinematic act of self-witness, Fox interrogates the machinations of trauma and memory to produce a raw and culturally significant filmic testimony. The following analysis considers the forms and functions of witnessing in Fox’s self-reflexive film from a critical perspective that encompasses trauma, testimony and autobiography studies.
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​Whilst making the documentary series Flying Confessions of a Free Woman, Jennifer Fox rediscovered a middle-school essay that made her rethink her first sexual experience. As she reconsidered her childhood memories from a position of adult retrospect, Fox came to realize that what she had considered a relationship was in actual fact sexual abuse, committed by two people whom she had respected and loved. The belated realization was the impetus for an autobiographical project that saw her move away from the vocational mode of documentary to construct a narrative film of self-witness. When asked to explain The Tale in an interview, Fox stated “It’s about unravelling denial, using myself as the red thread” (Fox in Reilly, 2018), a statement that compounds the significance of her self-witnessing project within a testimonial context on both a personal and a cultural level. As a retrospective act of self-witness, the production of The Tale allowed Fox to address suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, leading her to question herself and her ideologies in the present in order to confront her past and reshape her future.

As the keystone of the creative process of self-witness, the essay is the autobiographical artifact that galvanized Fox’s testimonial enquiry, as indicated by the title-card at the film’s end, which reads: “Based on ‘The Tale’ written by Jenny Fox, age 13” (1:49:03). Though ‘The Tale’ was written as a scholastic creative writing assignment, the first-person narrative retains the essayistic posture of introspection, articulating first-hand experience within a progressive and evaluative framework.  The essay’s totemic presence within the film serves as a reminder to the viewer that the film is the product of real-world self-witness, further underscored by Fox’s retention of her own name for the central character (Laura Dern)—a deliberate decision intended to authenticate the testimonial pedigree of the film. On the film’s official website, Fox attests, “By leaving the Jennifer character’s name as mine, I am there to tell [naysayers], ‘no, this really happened. And yes, I did really feel ‘love’ for these people as they robbed me of my trust and betrayed and hurt me’”. Fox’s use of her name is a prophetic gesture that inscribes autobiographical intent, but also serves to counter the pervasive cultural doubt that beleaguers the disclosure of sexual violence. In her book Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives, life-writing scholar Leigh Gilmore contends that in contemporary culture, the inherent truth claim of female testimony is often questioned, as a consequence of pervasive patriarchal discourses of power within testimonial settings. Though not completely exempt from this cultural bias, Gilmore argues that “Autobiography is more flexible than legal testimony” as it allows women to exploit “its literary elasticity to assert legitimacy” (9). By positing an autobiographical document at the center of the cinematic discourse, and designating a nominal avatar as representative of the autobiographical “I”, Fox is able to command the contractual invitation of autobiography to reinforce The Tale’s testimonial efficacy.

In the film, Jennifer Fox’s testimonial invitation is immediately issued through the voiceover that precedes the opening scene, in the phrase “The story you are about to see is true… as far as I know” (0:45). This introductory missive is indicative of three key considerations within the context of filmic testimony: the installation of the testimonial “I”, the declarative truth claim of testimony, and the acknowledgement of the fallibility of subjective memory within the context of traumatic testimony. The voice is the referential anchor of the embodied subject and “target of empathy” (Schmitt) of autobiographical discourse, in this case the testimonial “I”, which extends the relational invitation to empathic witnessing to the viewer by asserting the truth claim of testimony. Within the same statement, the testimonial “I” pronounces “the epistemic dilemma of testimony” (Krämer 32), which indicates both the impossibility of the verification of traumatic experience and the caveat of its incommunicability. The Tale holds both testimonial truth and traumatic memory in critical tension throughout, as Fox attempts to bear witness to the circumstances of her childhood sexual abuse in dialogue with the revelatory rationale of adult retrospect as a performative reenactment of self-witness.

The Tale is a manifestation of “autobiographical portraiture," which “is a way of offering a performative testimony about the manner in which personhood is constituted in relation to experiences of trauma” (Snooks 399). By extension, the screenplay is the framework for Fox’s performative testimony, as an antecedent act of retrospective self-witness within The Tale’s testimonial structure. For Fox the screenplay is the product of the scriptotherapeutic practice of “writing out and writing through traumatic experience” (Henke xii), with the help of which she is able to construct a coherent account of the labor of self-witness as the basis of her filmic testimony. Realized as a film, the self-witnessing agenda of the screenplay transmits Fox’s testimonial invitation through an intersubjective pact with the viewer, inviting them to bear witness to her traumatic past, but also to the process of self-witness that facilitates testimony.

The conditions of the testimonial witnessing structure are predicated upon the self-witness’s testimony and its receipt by a willing witness (Laub, Gilmore, et al.) whose role is determined by “involvement […] not in the events, but in the accounts given of them” (Laub 62). In essence, testimony is the revelation of traumatic experience, which “does not exist until it can be articulated and heard by a sympathetic listener” (Gilmore 6).  In the beginning, Jennifer’s refusal to define her childhood story as disclosure, and ultimately accept her experience as traumatic, complicates testimony’s relational dynamic, confounding the invitation to bear witness. After finding the essay, Jennifer’s mother, Nettie (Ellen Burstyn) calls multiple times in the film’s early scenes, expressing concern for her daughter and attempting to initiate the witnessing paradigm (2:30-3:01). At this point Jennifer avoids contact, but is visibly unsettled by the implications of her mother’s concern; when questioned about her preoccupation by her fiancé, Patrick (Common), she explains “sorry, I was just thinking about my mom. She’s been calling and she read this story I wrote as a kid about my first boyfriend, and I hadn’t told her about it because he was older, so she’s beside herself trying to reach me” (5:21). Jennifer dismisses her mother’s concerns, but the sharp flashbacks that follow her calls constitute “an instantly recognizable device to mark a traumatic return” (Luckhurst 180), as these flashbacks are “the unconscious language of repetition through which trauma initially speaks” (Gilmore 7). These fragmentary flashes of memory invade both Jennifer’s work (3:45) and sex with her partner (4:30) before the receipt of the story triggers a more coherent flashback of the environment in which it was written (5:57-6:52). The assignment instructions “Like Tom Sawyer: Write a fiction story set in your hometown” are visible within the frame as the younger Jenny’s voiceover accompanies her pen strokes on the pink paper (6:44), the same paper that Jennifer is holding in the narrative present. As a child, Fox veiled her testimonial disclosure in a school assignment, which, as the film shows, prompted her teacher to speculate on the inspiration for her story: “If what you talk about here were accurate I would say that you had been taken advantage of by older people. But, clearly you have a fine, full set of emotions blossoming into womanhood” (10:12-28). What becomes clear is testimony’s contingency upon both an explicit truth claim and an ethical witness (Laub; Derrida), but, by presenting the story as fiction, the testimonial structure of witnessing remains uninitiated and the “traumatic truth” of testimony as “traced through the perverse interplay of fact and fiction” (Luckhurst 143) is overlooked. Jennifer’s memory installs the belief that the story is fiction, which motivates her dismissive behavior. However, contrary to Jennifer’s “defensive dissociation” (Luckhurst 88), Fox’s use of flashback foreshadows the forthcoming exploration of traumatic experience as a signal to the viewer that, in spite of Jennifer’s recalcitrance, her testimonial invitation manifests piecemeal through memory work and the precedent acceptance of the film’s autobiographical register.
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Though posited initially as a story crafted in response to an academic prompt, the essayistic purview of The Tale is substantiated by Jenny’s “intellectual, emotional and physiological” (Smith and Watson 276) reflections upon adolescent awakening, as suggested by her teacher’s evaluation.  In the first instance, the film shows Jennifer reading the essay alone in her New York loft, the voiceover articulating the words as she reads them in a recognisably subjective trope: “I’d like to begin this story by telling you something so beautiful—”; the jump cut to a flashback of a teenaged Jenny (Jessica Sarah Flaum) is connected by the merging of their voices as Jenny takes up the voiceover. She reads: 
I’ve met two very special people whom I’ve come to love dearly. Imagine a woman who is married and a man who is divorced, sharing their lives in close friendship. Loving each other with all their souls, yet not being close with their bodies. Get this, I’m part of them both. I’m lucky enough to be able to share in their love. When I’m with them, the earth seems to shake and tremble— (9:07-47)  
The young Jenny’s reading narrates an imagined vignette, which serves to introduce the viewer to Mrs G. (Elizabeth Debicki) and Bill (Jason Ritter), both of whom smile directly to the camera outside their respective houses, before running in sync through the woods, and ultimately gazing up at a beaming Jenny seated atop a horse. The younger Jenny’s voice is replaced by Jennifer’s, as the wide shot shows the elder woman lifting the essay’s first page, completing the sentence, “–and often I’m afraid I’ll fall off of it” (9:50). In this instance the flashback is representative of Jennifer’s idealized memory, untainted by the reality of her traumatic past and preserved as the preferred context for her exploratory essay. But, the essay is both the bridge between past and present, and the axis around which the transient self-witnessing narrative revolves— both in the film, and in the process of its construction.. After reading the essay Jennifer chooses to “sit with [her] own memories” (10:35), which eventually compels her to seek validation through the comparison of her own memories with those of others who were present in her past.

For Fox, the process of self-witness became a relational exercise, necessitating the engagement of others as witnesses to events she had recalibrated in the story of her own history. This labor is brought to bear in The Tale, as Jennifer traverses the country in an attempt to clarify the details of her childhood that are obscured by the conflict between the essay and her memories; Jennifer seeks to resolve this tension primarily by speaking with those who were present at Mrs. G’s farm, albeit ignorant of her traumatic experience. These adjacent witnesses provide vital context for Jennifer’s warped memories, as they remind her how her age and her character rendered her more vulnerable than she remembered. When visiting with Becky (Jodi Long) Jennifer is shown photographs of her time at Mrs. G’s farm, which confirm her memories of the other girls but, as she is not in any of the shots, leave a question mark over her remembered self. Becky tells her “You were such a tiny, little thing. So much smaller than Franny and I. […] you almost looked like a little boy. […] you were so afraid, you barely said two words” (16:02-12). Jennifer’s reaction registers her confusion, as the earlier flashback shows her as a lithe and developing young woman in her mind’s eye. The encounter with Becky drives Jennifer to pursue further confirmation, which she looks for in her mother’s photo albums. On finding a print that accords with her memory, the close shot reveals the young woman from Jennifer’s flashback pictured with her horse (17:00). However, Jennifer’s mother points out that the photo she has found is of her at age fifteen in 1975, redirecting her to a photo from 1973 (17:15). The photo confirms Becky’s description, featuring a much younger and smaller Jenny (Isabelle Nélisse), whilst the reverse shot closely frames Jennifer’s failure to comprehend the discrepancy in her own memory. This encounter demonstrates the way that photographs “alter the ways that we conceive of our selves” (Anderst 226), as the earlier flashback is then replayed, this time with the younger Jenny at the center of the action. It is clear that Jenny is far more reserved and juvenile than Jennifer remembered, and as Jenny repeats the first line of the titular essay, the tone of the previously romanticized story shifts towards impropriety, lending credence to Nettie’s earlier reaction and forcing Jennifer to further question the context of the relationship she remembers so fondly.

The revelation of Jenny’s prepubescent body alters both Jennifer’s and the viewer’s perception of the power relations between Jenny and her adult lovers, exposing the underlying issue of consent. This adjustment unquestionably designates Jenny (and by extension, Fox) a “vulnerable subject” within the autobiographical discourse, by virtue of her status as a minor (Couser xii). Consequently, the ethical imperative of bearing witness is redoubled, as the implication of child sexual abuse irrevocably manifests. As the earlier flashback vignette is repeated, the young Jenny’s demeanor is markedly different; she is more reserved, less confident, and visibly in awe of Mrs. G as she attests in the voiceover, “She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. Every girl wanted to be just like her. Becky and Franny did. I did” (18:30-45). The extended flashback scene shows Jenny perceptibly unsure of herself in the company of the other girls at Mrs. G’s camp—both of whom are physically more mature (18:43)—and eager to comply with Mrs. G’s stringent training regime, which includes cross-country running with Bill. Mrs. G’s introductory words are darkly prophetic: “Bill is an excellent coach. He will teach you to go beyond the complaints of your bodies” (18:59), as Bill rounds the corner in slow motion causing Jenny to stand bolt upright (19:06). As Bill introduces himself to the girls in turn, Jenny is submissive, a dynamic that is further installed by Bill’s directive during the cohort’s run: “I am Nouga, you are Neets. When I say Nouga, you say Neets!” (19:35-38). As the other girls drop back in exhaustion, Jenny forces herself to keep pace with Bill, continuing with the call and response chant “Nouga—Neets” (19:27-20:03) as she obediently follows him through the woods alone. By presenting Jenny as she was in contrast with the way Jennifer remembered her, Fox dispels any doubt regarding the nature of the relationship, which prompts further inquiry as to the circumstances that led an introverted, but eager-to-please child to victimhood, and a seemingly content adult to repress the truth of her childhood exploitation.

Seen through flashbacks, the relationship with Mrs. G and Bill becomes routine, with Jenny spending every weekend at Mrs. G’s ranch where she keeps her horse. But, when Bill eventually suggests that Jenny stay with him without Mrs G., Jenny is visibly stricken, although Mrs G. creates the illusion that the decision to stay is Jenny’s (27:17). In the voiceover Jennifer is heard asking “What did I say? I don’t remember” (47:29-35) highlighting the fallibility of traumatic memory. Jennifer looks to the essay as an aide memoire, searching the pages for an answer: (47:46) “Did I say yes?” (47:50). From off screen Jennifer questions Jenny, who appears to be conversing with her older self through her reflection in the mirror (47:51-48:58), a strategy of filmic autobiography that for Leah Anderst “can reveal an autobiographer’s empathy with [herself] in the past” (Anderst 82). Jennifer’s reflection appears in the mirror next to Jenny’s, as she directs her to the essay as evidence that Jenny did not want to stay. Jenny, again, denounces the story as fiction, levelling the accusation that Jennifer has become “like all of them” (48:49) in trying to control her before leaving Bill’s bathroom enraged. Intercut with close shots of Jennifer reading the essay, the flashback demonstrates the way Bill’s ‘relationship’ with Jenny crosses a vital line. Bill asks Jenny to read provocative poetry aloud and when her nerves make her hands shake, he apologizes that he left it too late to light the fire, fetching her a blanket instead. The subjective camera adopts the remembering Jennifer’s point-of-view, panning from Bill to the fireplace and back again. This subjective manoeuvre reveals that the fire that was burning just seconds before in the reconstructed memory, was in truth dead (50:44), a detail that frames Bill’s subsequent request to share the blanket as a deliberate ruse enabling him to get closer to Jenny. As the viewer shares Jennifer’s subjective perspective, they see the way she ‘corrects’ the details of her memory, which simultaneously reframes Bill’s concern as coercion.  Bill tactically manipulates Jenny, stating “I want to save you from all those stupid young boys out there. I think you are perfect” before asking “Jenny, would you do something for me? Would you let me see you? […] Do you want to take your shirt off?” (52:45-53:18). Though Jenny is visibly reluctant, she complies; however, Bill soon escalates beyond looking. Jenny’s complete submission is depicted just a few scenes later as Bill ‘coaches’ Jenny through his attempt to penetrate her: “Just breathe… It’s okay…Not yet…We have to keep stretching you open slowly. No young boy would ever do this for you” (1:01:02-1:01:45). Bill’s reassuring words are discordant with his violent actions, contributing to Jenny’s misapprehension of their inappropriate sexual contact as intimacy, which, as Jennifer confirms throughout the course of the filmic narrative, derails her natural, sexual awakening and robs her of the ability to form lasting relationships (1:07:20 and 1:26:30). A close shot of Jenny’s face intercut with a reverse shot of Bill on top of her illustrates her agonizing resolve in response to her rape, as her voiceover explains, “I find that I trust him so much, I never realize where he’s leading me. Once we’re that far, I don’t know how to say no. I love him. He loves me” (1:00:52-1:01:31). Jenny’s words drive home her childish misunderstanding of consent, forging the connection between what begins as the innocent trust of her running coach, whom she follows for miles through the woods, to her eventual manipulation into an exploitative cycle of abuse that she is unable to recognize or stop; this is the basis of Jennifer’s ongoing mischaracterization of the relationship as complicit. After failing to enter Jenny, Bill places her hand under the blanket before pushing her head down (1:02:03-1:02:11) further emphasizing the aspect of coercion, after which she lays vacant next to him as he sleeps. The dissonance of Jenny’s juvenile body beside her adult abuser resonates in the high-angled shot, forcing the viewer to reflect on the horror of the experience that Jenny fails to comprehend. The sexual scenes between Jenny and Bill are purposely the most difficult to watch, as they unflinchingly represent the reality of child sexual abuse at the core of Fox’s self-witnessing project. In what is undeniably the pivotal revelation of the filmic testimony for both Jennifer and the viewer, Fox denounces the un-representability and unspeakability of trauma, bringing both into unambiguous, embodied focus.
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​Dori Laub explains that trauma “invariably plays a decisive formative role in who one comes to be, and in how one comes to live one’s life”, even when the trauma is “repressed” (70). Fox’s self-witnessing project illuminates this traumatic legacy by bearing witness to her abusers strategies of coercion and the lasting impact of the indoctrination she experienced in the facilitation of her abuse. In The Tale, Mrs. G and Bill initially exploit to their advantage Jenny’s feelings of marginalization within her family dynamic. When Jenny’s sister breaks her arm, her parents are unable to attend her end-of-season riding event at Mrs. G’s ranch, leaving Bill as her sole source of support during the competition; after the event Mrs. G takes a stranded Jenny to meet him for dinner at a nearby diner. It is during this meeting that Mrs. G and Bill begin to groom Jenny by flattering her writing and athletic talents before sharing the details of their affair. Jenny’s voiceover reflects upon this moment, in a passage taken from The Tale: 
How did they know they could trust me with their secret, that I would never break their confidence? The other girls would have told on them, but I would never tell my parents or the other adults. It was like an unspoken oath, and I felt proud of it. (38:20-38)
Jenny’s Montaignean introspection eschews the risk of secrecy, instead postulating an alliance of equals that further expresses her naïveté. By bringing Jenny into their confidence the couple establish the “secret order” of victimhood (Laub 67), which Laub explains is “lived as an unconscious alternate truth” long after the experience of trauma. When Jenny claims she feels invisible at home, Bill tells her: “They can’t see you the way we can” (46:03) offering an alternative “family” “based on complete honesty and love. Hiding nothing, revealing everything, just the truth” (46:24-37). This truth is subtly levied by Mrs. G and Bill, who expedite Jenny’s collusion by positing their own ideals as enlightened when compared with her parents’ conventional principles (45:06-46-37). This alternate ideology persists into adulthood, evinced as Jennifer’s indifference to marriage and her promiscuity in the wake of her abuse. When Jennifer’s fiancé, Martin, learns of her systemic manipulation by reading the letters she exchanged with Mrs. G and Bill, he levels, “That’s rape. That’s illegal” (54:16), but Jennifer’s riposte is one of acceptance and justification: “It was the seventies and people didn’t talk about it like that” (54:24). The same rationale is offered by Iris (Gretchen Koerner), who is initially presented as another adjacent witness in Jennifer’s attempt to make sense of her past, the existence of whom she had effaced. As Jennifer conducts what is essentially a documentary interview, the reason for Iris’ omission becomes clear; as Iris recounts her involvement with Bill and Mrs. G., Jennifer’s disclosure leads Iris to the realization that she was posited as a co-conspirator in the “secret order”, a fact that she had similarly repressed (1:28:53-1:30:15). In their book Traumatic Affect (2013), Meera Atkinson and Michael Richardson aver: “being open to one’s own trauma is necessary in order to be open to that of another, and conversely opening to the trauma of others facilitates opening to one’s own” (3); this assertion attests to the intersubjective exchange of testimonial witnessing as evinced in Jennifer’s encounter with Iris. Iris also provides the missing detail that allows Jennifer to assimilate the truth of her past, explaining that Mrs. G was “the cat bringing the mouse” (1:30:28). As the flashback vignette is replayed once again, the gaps in Jenny’s story are filled by the acceptance that Mrs. G. was the catalyst in the cycle of abuse (1:30:46-1:31:50).
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Laub explains, “Survivors who do not tell their story become victims of a distorted memory […], which causes an endless struggle with and of a delusion”; he goes on to avow “The longer the story remains untold, the more distorted it becomes in the survivor’s conception of it, so much so that the survivor doubts the reality of the actual events” (64). As a process of “repossession”, testimony “is a dialogical process of exploration and reconciliation of two worlds—the one that was brutally destroyed and the one that is” (Laub 74). In the repression of the traumatic truth of her past for more than thirty years, Jennifer failed to recognize her childhood story as self-witness from “within the experience” (Laub 61), negating its healing potential. The repercussions of undisclosed traumatic experience are articulated onscreen in a stylized dialogue between Jenny and Jennifer, which allows Fox to underscore the disparity between misinterpreted childhood trauma and the adult reclamation of memory that informs the belated realization of abuse. Recognizing that the truth had been hidden in plain sight the whole time, Jennifer challenges her younger self: Jenny walks through the school hallway gazing directly into the camera lens, when Jennifer’s voice from off screen accuses, “You lied to me. You told me it was a good thing all these years” (1:41:24-28). Jenny repeats the doctrine against marriage and children, resolute in her refusal of victimhood; but, her fear manifests when Jennifer tells her there were other victims and that she is planning to confront Bill in the present, which stops Jenny in her tracks as the school bell rings (1:43:00). Jennifer’s acceptance of the testimonial nature of the essay mobilizes her belated act of self-witness through a symbolic confrontation with Bill, as the telling of her traumatic past that secures her “liberation” (Laub 70).
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The Tale’s testimonial status influenced the critical and commercial reception of the film, as Fox strategically managed both the release and distribution of the film in line with her own testimonial agenda. When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018, the industry was besieged by the coalescing sociopolitical #TimesUp and #MeToo movements in response to widespread allegations of historical sexual assault and misogyny. In this context, Fox wanted to “break the picture” of what an abused woman looks like (Fox in Gray), to challenge public perceptions of belated outcry and to address pervasive opinions around the perpetrators of historical sexual abuse. Fox’s representative awareness is further evinced in the deliberate “mediatization” (O’Loughlin) of The Tale. Ben O’ Loughlin explains: “Mediatization refers to the manner in which a social event, process or practice becomes considered by those participating in it as a media phenomenon, and any media organizations involved are aware of themselves as integral to that phenomenon” (193). Fox’s public profile, coupled with the film’s personal and testimonial capital, inevitably drew significant media interest, but this interest was mobilized as activism, using the film’s press to draw attention to—and raise awareness of—the effects of childhood sexual trauma and the rationale for belated outcry in cases of historical sexual abuse. Jordan Hoffman’s five-star review in The Guardian dubbed The Tale “the mother of all #MeToo movies”, describing it as “an innovative, honest and important film” that made both him and his contemporaries “extremely uncomfortable” during the Sundance screening he attended (n.p.). Nevertheless, as he concludes his review Hoffman urges readers to see The Tale, essentially perpetuating Fox’s invitation to bear witness as an ambassadorial “witness to the process of witnessing itself” (Laub 62). Moreover, by revealing her own experience of childhood trauma as filmic testimony within the public domain, Fox championed therapeutic engagement, creating an online presence for the film that included numerous resources for those who might have been affected by the issues raised in The Tale. The film’s website includes an index of links to support charities and organizations at the bottom of each page, all of which Fox has engaged with in the composition and dissemination of the film. The website remains active to this day, providing a paratextual platform beyond the viewing experience through which Fox is able to propagate the testimonial witnessing paradigm, offering an interactive outpost for testimony that offers both education and empathy for those who need either, or both.

Fox felt strongly about including the explicit and sensitive sexual content to preserve the integrity of traumatic experience within the testimonial act of self-witness, stating “It was a deal breaker to take it out” (Fox in Galuppo); however, choosing to do so raised a number of creative and ethical concerns, further complicated by her multiple roles within the witnessing structure. Fox initially experienced resistance from financiers and cinematographers, all of whom deemed the sexual content too difficult to address (Galuppo). But, Fox persevered, exhausting her personal connections to amass the necessary financial and creative support for the film leveraged by her own personal investment. As both filmmaker and subject, Fox negotiates the ethical imperative of bearing witness from each perspective, both of which must contend with trauma’s innate resistance to representation (Caruth). In her coalescent roles of self-witness and autobiographical subject, Fox is compelled to represent her experience as accurately as she is able, in line with her personal testimonial agenda. But, the necessary re-enactment of the traumatic episode presents an ethical, representational dilemma. Fox resolves this issue by casting an adult body double to take the place of Nélisse, the actress in the role of young Jenny, in all scenes of a sexual nature (confirmed by the disclaimer in the end credits), using arbitrary prompts to illicit her pained expressions for the close shots (Nicholson). As director, Fox ensures the substitution is imperceptible on screen using the Kuleshov effect—an editing technique whereby separate images are strategically shown in sequence to produce meaning—to facilitate a credible representation of traumatic experience without destabilizing the autobiographical integrity of the testimonial “I”, and further, protecting the young actress from an inappropriate situation on set. Consequently, Fox successfully navigates the ethical imperative of bearing witness without compromising the moral or testimonial boundaries of representation.

​Fox acknowledged the affective power of the film and the potential impact that inviting the viewer to bear witness could have. Instead of issuing the film through theatres, Fox struck a worldwide deal with HBO that would bypass cinematic release and bring the film directly to the home-viewing arena, making The Tale more accessible for a broad range of viewers; Fox stated:
It has always been my intent to find an engaged distribution partner who deeply understands the wide reach of the project, not just as a film but for the impact it can have on a larger global conversation […]. In a world in which stories like mine have often been pushed into the darkness, no one had been better at shining a light on storytelling and important issues than HBO. (Fox in Galuppo)  
​This move also enabled Fox to authorize what are listed on the film’s website as “outreach screenings” by charitable organizations, academic institutions and activist groups throughout the world, from Stellenbosch to Seoul. Recognizing the film’s affective potential, the screening list is preceded by the directive:
THE TALE is a movie like none we’ve ever experienced on this topic. It opens our eyes, hearts, and minds. The film is particularly effective when watched and talked about in small or large groups, in the classroom, in the office, in screening rooms and with your colleagues, fellow students, and friends. We invite you to sign up to host free public screenings of THE TALE in your community. With our complimentary viewing guides and other materials, we are committed to supporting your discussions and your participation. Thank you for helping us change the conversation.
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​With this guidance on, and perpetuation of, the invitation to bear witness, Fox assumes an ambassadorial role that both enables self-witness and actively encourages ethical, empathic witnessing as an imperative cultural step.
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​According to Dominic La Capra: 
The importance of testimonies becomes more apparent when they are related to the way they provide something other than purely documentary knowledge […] in the attempt to understand experience and its aftermath, including the role of memory and its lapses, in coming to terms with – or denying and repressing – the past. (86-7) 
​In bringing the “unrepresentability” (Caruth 131) of the trauma of childhood sexual abuse to the screen through her own filmic testimony, sharing her experience and her process of self-witnessing as a narrative film, Fox installs the viewer as both “the immediate receiver” of her testimony and the witness to witnessing (Laub 61-2) within a broader cultural context. In her acceptance of the inevitable responsibility of metonymic representation, or “representativeness” (Gilmore), Fox recognizes the ethical imperative of bearing witness to an endemic issue that is inherently unspeakable. As a result, Fox uses testimony as “a form of action” (Laub 70), as both a personal processing tool and a valiant, visible vindication for those she represents: survivors of sexual trauma. 
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Stefanie El Madawi recently completed her PhD titled 'Approaching Contemporary Cinematic I-Witnessing' at the University of Huddersfield, UK as the recipient of a North of England Consortium of Arts and Humanities (NECAH) bursary. Her teaching experience extends to literary topics such as contemporary women's writing, adaptation, and cultural theory, and her research interests encompass autobiography, testimony, and literary modes of witnessing.


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  • 9.1 (Fall 2022)
    • 9.1 Articles >
      • Mark Houston, "Riding Out of Abstraction: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Re-materialization of ​Social Justice Rhetoric in “The Sacred and the Superfund”" (9.1)
      • Ryan McIlvain, ""You Get to Decide What to Worship but Not What's Good": Rereading 'This Is Water'" (9.1)
      • Quincy Gray McMichael, "Laboring toward Leisure: The Characterization of Work in ​Maine’s Back-to-the-Land Memoirs" (9.1)
      • Aggie Stewart, "Bringing Dark Events to Light: ​Emotional Pacing in the Trauma Narrative" (9.1)
      • Emma Winsor Wood, "A Lovely Woman Tapers Off into a Fish: Monstrosity in Montaigne’s Essais" (9.1)
    • 9.1 Conversations >
      • Philip Newman Lawton, "Rousseau's Wandering Mind" (9.1)
      • Claire Salinda, "Bodily Dissociation as a Female Coping Mechanism in ​The Shapeless Unease, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, and Girlhood" (9.1)
      • Hannah White, "“Which sounds bad and maybe was”: A Study of Narrative in Beth Nguyen’s “Apparent”" (9.1)
    • 9.1 Pedagogy >
      • Jessica Handler, "Your Turn" (9.1)
      • Sonya Huber, "Expressing Anger as a Positive Choice" (9.1)
      • Kozbi Simmons, "Literacy as Emancipation" (9.1)
      • Wally Suphap, "Writing and Teaching the Polemic" (9.1)
  • Archives
    • Journal Index >
      • Author Index
      • Subject Index
    • 1.1 (Fall 2014) >
      • Editor's Note
      • 1.1 Articles >
        • Sarah Heston, "Critical Memoir: A Recovery From Codes" (1.1)
        • Andy Harper, "The Joke's On Me: The Role of Self-Deprecating Humor in Personal Narrative" (1.1)
        • Ned Stuckey-French, "Our Queer Little Hybrid Thing" (1.1)
        • Brian Nerney, "John McCarten’s ‘Irish Sketches’: ​The New Yorker’s ‘Other Ireland’ in the Early Years of the Troubles, 1968-1974" (1.1)
        • Wendy Fontaine, "Where Memory Fails, Writing Prevails: Using Fallacies of Memory to Create Effective Memoir" (1.1)
        • Scott Russell Morris, "The Idle Hours of Charles Doss, or ​The Essay As Freedom and Leisure" (1.1)
      • 1.1 Conversations >
        • Donald Morrill, "An Industrious Enchantment" (1.1)
        • Sonya Huber, "Amazon Constellations" (1.1)
        • Derek Hinckley, "Fun Home: Change and Tradition in Graphic Memoir" (1.1)
        • Interview with Melanie Hoffert
        • Interview with Kelly Daniels
      • 1.1 Pedagogy >
        • Robert Brooke, "Teaching: 'Rhetoric: The Essay'" (1.1)
        • Richard Louth, "In Brief: Autobiography and Life Writing" (1.1)
    • 1.2 (Spring 2015) >
      • 1.2 Articles >
        • Kelly Harwood, "Then and Now: A Study of Time Control in ​Scott Russell Sanders' 'Under the Influence'" (1.2)
        • Diana Wilson, "Laces in the Corset: Structures of Poetry and Prose that Bind the Lyric Essay" (1.2)
        • Randy Fertel, "A Taste For Chaos: Creative Nonfiction as Improvisation" (1.2)
        • Lynn Z. Bloom, "Why the Worst Trips are the Best: The Comic Travails of Geoffrey Wolff & Jonathan Franzen" (1.2)
        • Ingrid Sagor, "What Lies Beside Gold" (1.2)
        • Catherine K. Buni, "Ego, Trip: On Self-Construction—and Destruction—in Creative Nonfiction" (1.2)
      • 1.2 Conversations >
        • Doug Carlson, "Paul Gruchow and Brian Turner: Two Memoirs Go Cubistic" (1.2)
        • Patrick Madden, "Aliased Essayists" (1.2)
        • Beth Slattery, "Hello to All That" (1.2)
        • Interview with Michael Martone (1.2)
      • Spotlight >
        • Richard Louth, "The New Orleans Writing Marathon and the Writing World" (1.2)
        • Kelly Lock-McMillen, "Journey to the Center of a Writer's Block" (1.2)
        • Jeff Grinvalds, "Bringing It Back Home: The NOWM in My Classroom" (1.2)
        • Susan Martens, "Finding My Nonfiction Pedagogy Muse at the NOWM" (1.2)
      • 1.2 Pedagogy >
        • Steven Church, "The Blue Guide Project: Fresno" (1.2)
        • Stephanie Vanderslice, "From Wordstar to the Blogosphere and Beyond: ​A Digital Literacy and Teaching Narrative (Epiphany Included)" (1.2)
        • Jessica McCaughey, "That Snow Simply Didn’t Fall: How (and Why) to Frame the Personal Essay as a Critical Inquiry into Memory in the First-Year Writing Classroom" (1.2)
    • 2.1 (Fall 2015) >
      • Editor's Note2.1
      • 2.1 Articles >
        • Daniel Nester, "Straddling the Working Class Memoir" (2.1)
        • Sarah M. Wells, "The Memoir Inside the Essay Collection: ​Jo Ann Beard's Boys of My Youth" (2.1)
        • Chris Harding Thornton, "Ted Kooser's "Hands": On Amobae, Empathy, and Poetic Prose" (2.1)
        • Steven Harvey & Ana Maria Spagna, "The Essay in Parts" (2.1)
        • Megan Culhane Galbraith, "Animals as Aperture: How Three Essayists Use Animals to Convey Meaning and Emotion" (2.1)
      • 2.1 Conversations >
        • Barrie Jean Borich, "Deep Portrait: On the Atmosphere of Nonfiction Character" (2.1)
        • Tim Bascom, "As I See It: Art and the Personal Essay" (2.1)
        • Adrian Koesters, "Because I Said So: Language Creation in Memoir" (2.1)
        • Interview with Simmons Buntin (2.1)
        • Mike Puican, "Narrative Disruption in Memoir" (2.1)
      • 1.2 Pedagogy >
        • Bernice M. Olivas, "Politics of Identity in the Essay Tradition" (2.1)
        • Ioanna Opidee, "Essaying Tragedy" (2.1)
        • Crystal N. Fodrey, "Teaching CNF Writing to College Students: A Snapshot of CNF Pedagogical Scholarship" (2.1)
        • W. Scott Olsen, "Teaching Adventure, Exploration and Risk" (2.1)
        • Christian Exoo & Sydney Fallon, "Using CNF to Teach the Realities of Sexual Assault to ​First Responders: An Annotated Bibliography" (2.1)
    • Special Conference Issue
    • 2.2 (Spring 2016) >
      • 2.2 Articles >
        • Micah McCrary, "A Legacy of Whiteness: Reading and Teaching Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land" (2.2)
        • Marco Wilkinson, "Self-Speaking World" (2.2)
        • Miles Harvey, "We Are All Travel Writers, We Are All Blind" (2.2)
        • Ashley Anderson, "Playing with the Essay: Cognitive Pattern Play in Ander Monson and Susan Sontag" (2.2)
        • Lawrence Evan Dotson, "Persona in Progression: ​A Look at Creative Nonfiction Literature in Civil Rights and Rap" (2.2)
      • 2.2 Conversations >
        • Julie Platt, "What Our Work is For: ​The Perils and Possibilities of Arts-Based Research" (2.2)
        • William Bradley, "On the Pleasure of Hazlitt" (2.2)
        • Jie Liu, "​'Thirteen Canada Geese': On the Video Essay" (2.2)
        • Stacy Murison, "​Memoir as Sympathy: Our Desire to be Understood" (2.2)
      • 2.2 Pedagogy >
        • Stephanie Guedet, "​Feeling Human Again: Toward a Pedagogy of Radical Empathy" (2.2)
        • DeMisty Bellinger-Delfield, "Exhibiting Speculation in Nonfiction: Teaching 'What He Took'" (2.2)
        • Gail Folkins, "Straight from the Source: ​Primary Research and the Personality Profile" (2.2)
    • 3.1 (Fall 2016) >
      • 3.1 Articles >
        • Chelsey Clammer, "Discovering the (W)hole Story: On Fragments, Narrative, and Identity in the Embodied Essay" (3.1)
        • Sarah Einstein, "'The Self-ish Genre': Questions of Authorial Selfhood and Ethics in ​First Person Creative Nonfiction" (3.1)
        • Elizabeth Paul, "​Seeing in Embraces" (3.1)
        • Jennifer M. Dean, "Sentiment, Not Sentimentality" (3.1)
      • 3.1 Conversations >
        • Interview with Robert Atwan (3.1)
        • Jody Keisner, "'Did I Miss a Key Point?': ​A Study of Repetition in Joan Didion’s Blue Nights" (3.1)
        • Julija Sukys, "In Praise of Slim Volumes: Big Book, Big Evil" (3.1)
        • Lynn Z. Bloom, "​The Great American Potluck Party" (3.1)
        • Jenny Spinner, "​The Best American Essays Series as (Partial) Essay History" (3.1)
      • 3.1 Pedagogy >
        • Heath Diehl, "​The Photo Essay: The Search for Meaning" (3.1)
        • Sonya Huber, "​James Baldwin: Nonfiction of a Native Son" (3.1)
        • Christian Exoo, "Using CNF to Teach the Realities of ​Intimate Partner Violence to First Responders: An Annotated Bibliography" (3.1)
        • John Proctor, "Teachin’ BAE: A New Reclamation of Research and Critical Thought" (3.1)
        • Richard Gilbert, "Classics Lite: On Teaching the Shorter, Magazine Versions of James Baldwin's 'Notes of a Native Son' and ​Jonathan Lethem's 'The Beards'" (3.1)
        • Dawn Duncan & Micaela Gerhardt, "The Power of Words to Build Bridges of Empathy" (3.1)
    • 3.2 (Spring 2017) >
      • 3.2 Articles >
        • Jennifer Lang, "When Worlds Collide: ​Writers Exploring Their Personal Narrative in Context" (3.2)
        • Creighton Nicholas Brown, "Educational Archipelago: Alternative Knowledges and the Production of Docile Bodies in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place and Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis" (3.2)
        • Nicola Waldron, "Containing the Chaos: On Spiral Structure and the Creation of Ironic Distance in Memoir" (3.2)
        • Charles Green, "Remaking Relations: ​Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates Beyond James Baldwin" (3.2)
        • Joey Franklin, "Facts into Truths: Henry David Thoreau and the Role of Hard Facts in ​Creative Nonfiction" (3.2)
      • 3.2 Conversations >
        • Thomas Larson, "What I Am Not Yet, I Am" (3.2)
        • Amanda Ake, "Vulnerability and the Page: Chloe Caldwell’s I’ll Tell You In Person"​ (3.2)
        • "Interview with Gail Griffin" (3.2)
        • Alysia Sawchyn, "On Best American Essays 1989" (3.2)
      • 3.2 Pedagogy >
        • D. Shane Combs, "Go Craft Yourself: Conflict, Meaning, and Immediacies Through ​J. Cole’s “Let Nas Down” (3.2)
        • Michael Ranellone, "Brothers, Keepers, Students: John Edgar Wideman Inside and Outside of Prison" (3.2)
        • Emma Howes & Christian Smith, ""You have to listen very hard”: Contemplative Reading, Lectio Divina, and ​Social Justice in the Classroom" (3.2)
        • Megan Brown, "The Beautiful Struggle: ​Teaching the Productivity of Failure in CNF Courses" (3.2)
    • 4.1 (Fall 2017) >
      • Editor's Note
      • 4.1 Articles >
        • Jennifer Case, "Place Studies: Theory and Practice in Environmental Nonfiction"
        • Bob Cowser, Jr., "Soldiers, Home: Genre & the American Postwar Story from Hemingway to O'Brien & then Wolff"
        • Sam Chiarelli, "Audience as Participant: The Role of Personal Perspective in Contemporary Nature Writing"
        • Kate Dusto, "Reconstructing Blank Spots and Smudges: How Postmodern Moves Imitate Memory in Mary Karr's The Liars' Club"
        • Joanna Eleftheriou, "Is Genre Ever New? Theorizing the Lyric Essay in its Historical Context"
        • Harriet Hustis, ""The Only Survival, The Only Meaning": ​The Structural Integrity of Thornton Wilder's Bridge in John Hersey's Hiroshima"
      • 4.1 Conversations >
        • Taylor Brorby, "​On 'Dawn and Mary'"
        • Steven Harvey, "​From 'Leap'"
        • J. Drew Lanham, "​On 'Joyas Voladoras'"
        • Patrick Madden, "On 'His Last Game'"
        • Ana Maria Spagna, "On 'How We Wrestle is Who We Are'"
      • 4.1 Pedagogy >
        • Jacqueline Doyle, "Shuffling the Cards: ​I Think Back Through Judith Ortiz Cofer"
        • Amy E. Robillard, "Children Die No Matter How Hard We Try: What the Personal Essay Teaches Us About Reading"
    • 4.2 (Spring 2018) >
      • 4.2 Articles >
        • Megan Brown, "Testimonies, Investigations, and Meditations: ​Telling Tales of Violence in Memoir"
        • Corinna Cook, "Documentation and Myth: On Daniel Janke's How People Got Fire"
        • Michael W. Cox, "Privileging the Sentence: David Foster Wallace’s Writing Process for “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s”
        • Sarah Pape, "“Artistically Seeing”: Visual Art & the Gestures of Creative Nonfiction"
        • Annie Penfield, "Moving Towards What is Alive: ​The Power of the Sentence to Transform"
        • Keri Stevenson, "Partnership, Not Dominion: ​Resistance to Decay in the Falconry Memoir"
      • 4.2 Conversations >
        • Interview with Jericho Parms (4.2)
        • "Containing the Hidden Lives of Ordinary Things: A Conversation with Seven Authors"
        • Amy Monticello, "The New Greek Chorus: Collective Characters in Creative Nonfiction"
        • Stacy Murison, "David Foster Wallace's 'Ticket to the Fair'"
        • Emery Ross, "Toward a Craft of Disclosure: Risk, Shame, & Confession in the Harrowing Essay"
      • 4.2 Pedagogy >
        • Sonya Huber, "Field Notes for a Vulnerable & Immersed Narrator" (4.2)
        • W. Scott Olsen, "In Other Words" (4.2)
    • 5.1 (Fall 2018) >
      • 5.1 Articles >
        • Emily W. Blacker, "Ending the Endless: The Art of Ending Personal Essays" (5.1)
        • Marya Hornbacher, ""The World is Not Vague": Nonfiction and the Urgency of Fact" (5.1)
        • Rachel May, "The Pen and the Needle: ​ Intersections of Text and Textile in and as Nonfiction" (5.1)
        • Jen Soriano, "Multiplicity from the Margins: The Expansive Truth of Intersectional Form" (5.1)
      • 5.1 Conversations >
        • Matthew Ferrence, "In Praise of In Praise of Shadows: Toward a Structure of Reverse Momentum" (5.1)
        • John Proctor, "Nothing Out of Something: Diagramming Sentences of Oppression" (5.1)
        • Alysia Sawchyn, "Essaying the World: ​On Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions" (5.1)
        • Vivian Wagner, "Crafting Digression: Interactivity and Gamification in Creative Nonfiction" (5.1)
        • Nicole Walker, "On Beauty" (5.1)
      • 5.1 Spotlight >
        • Philip Graham, "The Shadow Knows (5.1)
        • Miles Harvey, "The Two Inmates: ​Research in Creative Nonfiction and the Power of “Outer Feeling”" (5.1)
        • Tim Hillegonds, "Making Fresh" (5.1)
        • Michele Morano, "Creating Meaning Through Structure" (5.1)
      • 5.1 Pedagogy >
        • Meghan Buckley, "[Creative] Nonfiction Novella: Teaching Postcolonial Life Writing and the ​Hybrid Genre of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place" (5.1)
        • Edvige Giunta, "Memoir as Cross-Cultural Practice in Italian American Studies" (5.1)
        • Jody Keisner, "Gender Identity in Personal Writing: Contextualizing the Syllabi" (5.1)
        • Terry Ann Thaxton, "Workshop Wild" (5.1)
        • Amanda Wray, "​Contesting Traditions: Oral History in Creative Writing Pedagogy" (5.1)
    • 5.2 (Spring 2019) >
      • 5.2 Articles >
        • Nina Boutsikaris, "On Very Short Books, Miniatures, and Other Becomings" (5.2)
        • Kay Sohini, "The Graphic Memoir as a Transitional Object: ​ Narrativizing the Self in Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?" (5.2)
        • Kelly Weber, ""We are the Poem": Structural Fissures and Levels in ​Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Conversations >
        • Sam Cha, "​Unbearable Splendor: Against "Hybrid" Genre; Against Genre" (5.2)
        • Rachel Cochran, "Infection in “The Hour of Freedom”: Containment and Contamination in Philip Kennicott’s “Smuggler”" (5.2)
        • Katharine Coles, "​If a Body" (5.2)
        • A.M. Larks, "Still Playing the Girl" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Spotlight >
        • Charles Green, "In Praise of Navel Gazing: An Ars Umbilica" (5.2)
        • Sarah Kruse, "​The Essay: Landscape, Failure, and Ordinary’s Other" (5.2)
        • Desirae Matherly, "Something More Than This" (5.2)
        • Susan Olding, "Unruly Pupil" (5.2)
        • Jane Silcott, "Essaying Vanity" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Tribute to Louise DeSalvo >
        • Julija Sukys, "One Mother to Another: Remembering Louise DeSalvo (1942—2018)" (5.2)
        • Nancy Caronia and Edvige Giunta, "The Essential Louise DeSalvo Reading List" (5.2)
        • Nancy Caronia and Edvige Giunta, "From the Personal Edge: Beginning to Remember Louise DeSalvo" (5.2)
        • Richard Hoffman, "DeSalvo Tribute, IAM Books, Boston" (5.2)
        • Peter Covino, "Getting It Right – Homage for Louise DeSalvo" (5.2)
        • Mary Jo Bona, "Pedagogy of the Liberated and Louise DeSalvo’s Gifts" (5.2)
        • Joshua Fausty, "The Shared Richness of Life Itself" (5.2)
      • 5.2 Pedagogy >
        • Ashley Anderson, "Teaching Experimental Structures through Objects and ​John McPhee’s 'The Search for Marvin Gardens'" (5.2)
        • Trisha Brady, "Negotiating Linguistic Borderlands, Valuing Linguistic Diversity, and Incorporating Border Pedagogy in a College Composition Classroom" (5.2)
        • Kim Hensley Owens, "Writing Health and Disability: Two Problem-Based Composition Assignments" (5.2)
        • Reshmi Mukherjee, "Threads: From the Refugee Crisis: Creative Nonfiction and Critical Pedagogy" (5.2)
        • Susan M. Stabile, "Architectures of Revision" (5.2)
    • 6.1 (Fall 2019) >
      • 6.1 Articles >
        • Lynn Z. Bloom, "The Slippery Slope: ​Ideals and Ethical Issues in High Altitude Climbing Narratives" (6.1)
        • Tanya Bomsta, "The Performance of Epistemic Agency of the ​Autobiographical Subject in Terry Tempest Williams’s When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice" (6.1)
        • Lorna Hummel, "Querying and Queering Caregiving: Reading Bodies Othered by Illness via Porochista Khakpour’s Sick: A Memoir" (6.1)
        • Laura Valeri, "Tell Tale Interviews: Lessons in True-Life Trauma Narratives Gleaned from ​Jennifer Fox’s The Tale" (6.1)
        • Arianne Zwartjes​, "Under the Skin: An Exploration of Autotheory" (6.1)
      • 6.1 Conversations >
        • Tracy Floreani, "​"Sewing and Telling": On Textile as Story" (6.1)
        • Tessa Fontaine, "The Limits of Perception: Trust Techniques in Nonfiction" (6.1)
        • Patrick Madden, "​Once More to 'His Last Game'" (6.1) >
          • Brian Doyle, "Twice More to the Lake" (6.1)
        • Randon Billings Noble, "The Sitting" (6.1)
        • Donna Steiner, "Serving Size: On Hunger and Delight" (6.1)
        • Natalie Villacorta, "Autofiction: Rightly Shaped for Woman’s Use" (6.1)
      • 6.1 Tribute to Ned Stuckey-French >
        • Marcia Aldrich, "The Book Reviewer" (6.1)
        • Bob Cowser, "Meeting Bobby Kennedy" (6.1)
        • Sonya Huber, "Working and Trying" (6.1)
        • Carl H. Klaus, "On Ned Stuckey-French and Essayists on the Essay" (6.1)
        • Robert Root, "On The American Essay in the American Century" (6.1)
      • 6.1 Pedagogy >
        • John Currie, "​The Naïve Narrator in Student-Authored Environmental Writing" (6.1)
        • Steven Harvey, "The Humble Essayist's Paragraph of the Week: A Discipline of the Heart and Mind" (6.1)
        • Reagan Nail Henderson, "Make Me Care!: Creating Digital Narratives in the Composition Classroom" (6.1)
        • Abriana Jetté, "Making Meaning: Authority, Authorship, and the Introduction to Creative Writing Syllabus" (6.1)
        • Jessie Male, "Teaching Lucy Grealy’s “Mirrorings” and the Importance of Disability Studies Pedagogy in Composition Classrooms" (6.1)
        • Wendy Ryden, "Liminally True: Creative Nonfiction as Transformative Thirdspace" (6.1)
    • 6.2 (Spring 2020) >
      • Guest Editor's Note to the Special Issue
      • 6.2 Articles >
        • Maral Aktokmakyan, "Revisioning Gendered Reality in ​Armenian Women’s Life Writing of the Post-Genocidal Era: Zaruhi Kalemkearian’s From the Path of My Life"
        • Manisha Basu, "Regimes of Reality: ​Of Contemporary Indian Nonfiction and its Free Men"
        • Stefanie El Madawi, "Telling Tales: Bearing Witness in Jennifer Fox’s The Tale"
        • Inna Sukhenko and Anastasia Ulanowicz, "Narrative, Nonfiction, and the Nuclear Other: Western Representations of Chernobyl in the Works of Adam Higginbotham, Serhii Plokhy, and Kate Brown"
      • 6.2 Conversations >
        • Leonora Anyango-Kivuva, "Daughter(s) of Rubanga: An Author, a Student, and Other Stories in Between"
        • Victoria Brown, "How We Write When We Write About Life: Caribbean Nonfiction Resisting the Voyeur"
        • David Griffith, "Wrecking the Disimagination Machine"
        • Stacey Waite, "Coming Out With the Truth"
      • Tribute to Michael Steinberg >
        • Jessica Handler, "Notes on Mike Steinberg"
        • Joe Mackall, "Remembering Mike Steinberg: On the Diamond and at the Desk"
        • Laura Julier, "Making Space"
      • 6.2 Pedagogy >
        • Jens Lloyd, "Truthful Inadequacies: Teaching the Rhetorical Spark of Bashō’s Travel Sketches"
        • George H. Jensen, "Situating Scenes: Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life”
        • Gregory Stephens, "Footnotes from the ‘Margins’: Outcomes-based Literary Nonfiction Pedagogy in Puerto Rico"
    • 7.1 (Fall 2020) >
      • 7.1 Articles >
        • Jo-Anne Berelowitz, "Mourning and Melancholia in Memoir" (Assay 7.1)
        • Carlos Cunha, "On the Chronicle" (Assay 7.1)
        • Bruce Owens Grimm, "Haunted Memoir" (Assay 7.1)
        • Colleen Hennessy, "Irish Motherhood in Irish Nonfiction: Abortion and Agency" (Assay 7.1)
        • James Perrin Warren, "Underland: Reading with Robert Macfarlane" (Assay 7.1)
      • 7.1 Conversations >
        • Alex Brostoff, ""What are we going to do with our proximity, baby!?" ​ A Reply in Multiples of The Hundreds" (Assay 7.1)
        • Steven Harvey, "Lyric Memory: A Guide to the Mnemonics of Nonfiction" (Assay 7.1)
        • Lisa Low, "Proleptic Strategies in Race-Based Essays: Jordan K. Thomas, Rita Banerjee, and Durga Chew-Bose" (Assay 7.1)
        • Nicole Walker, "The Concrete Poetry of Ander Monson’s Essays" (Assay 7.1)
      • 7.1 Pedagogy >
        • Audrey T. Heffers, "Positionality and Experience in the Creative Nonfiction Classroom" (Assay 7.1)
        • James McAdams, "Ars Poetica, Ars Media, Ars COVID-19: Creative Writing in the Medical Classroom" (Assay 7.1)
        • Freesia McKee, "Feedback as Fan Letter" (Assay 7.1)
        • Anthony Moll, "Teaching and Writing True Stories Through ​Feminist, Womanist and Black Feminist Epistemologies" (Assay 7.1)
        • Jill Stukenberg, "“Inspiration in the Drop of Ink”: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Observations in Introduction to Creative Writing" (Assay 7.1)
    • 7.2 (Spring 2021) >
      • 7.2 Articles >
        • Whitney Brown, "Melting Ice and Disappointing Whale Hunts: A Climate-Focused Review of Contemporary Travel Writing" (Assay 7.2)
        • George Estreich, "Ross Gay’s Logics of Delight" (Assay 7.2)
        • Wes Jamison, "'You Are Absent': The Pronoun of Address in Nonfiction" (Assay 7.2)
        • Zachary Ostraff, "The Lyric Essay as a Form of Counterpoetics" (Assay 7.2)
        • Kara Zivin, "Interrogating Patterns: Meandering, Spiraling, and Exploding through ​The Two Kinds of Decay" (Assay 7.2)
      • 7.2 Conversations >
        • Sarah Minor
        • David Shields
      • 7.2 Pedagogy >
        • Megan Baxter, "On Teaching Brian Doyle’s “Leap” to Students Born After 9/11" (Assay 7.2)
        • Jennifer Case, "'Toward a New, Broader Perspective': Place-Based Pedagogy and the Narrative Interview"
        • Kelly K. Ferguson, "Cribbing Palpatine’s Syllabus: Or, What Professoring for the Evil Empire Taught Me ​About Instructional Design" (Assay 7.2)
        • Jennifer Pullen, "Seeking Joy in the Classroom: Nature Writing in 2020" (Assay 7.2)
    • 8.1 (Fall 2021) >
      • 8.1 Articles >
        • Allison Ellis, "Nonfiction Ghost Hunting" (Assay 8.1)
        • Lisa Levy, "We Are All Modern: Exploring the Vagaries of Consciousness in 20th & 21st Century Biography and Life Writing" (Assay 8.1)
        • Ashley Espinoza, "A las Mujeres: Hybrid Identities in Latina Memoir" (Assay 8.1)
        • Cherie Nelson, "The Slippery Self: Intertextuality in Lauren Slater’s Lying" (Assay 8.1)
        • Amie Souza Reilly, "Reading the Gaps: On Women’s Nonfiction and Page Space" (Assay 8.1)
      • 8.1 Conversations >
        • Amy Bowers, "The Elegiac Chalkboard in Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter”" (Assay 8.1)
        • Theresa Goenner, "​The Mania of Language: Robert Vivian's Dervish Essay" (Assay 8.1)
        • Kathryn Nuernberger, "Writing Women’s Histories" (Assay 8.1)
        • Louisa McCullough, "The Case for In-Person Conversation" (Assay 8.1)
        • Kat Moore, "Rupture in Time (and Language): Hybridity in Kathy Acker’s Essays" (Assay 8.1)
      • 8.1 Pedagogy >
        • Mike Catron, "There’s No Such Thing as Too Much of Jason Sheehan’s “There’s No Such Thing As Too Much Barbecue”: ​A Pedagogical Discussion" (Assay 8.1)
        • Brooke Covington, "Ars Media: A Toolkit for Narrative Medicine in Writing Classrooms" (Assay 8.1)
        • W. Scott Olsen, "​A Desire for Stories" (Assay 8.1)
        • C.S. Weisenthal, "​Seed Stories: Pitched into the Digital Archive" (Assay 8.1)
    • 8.2 (Spring 2022) >
      • 8.2 Articles >
        • Barrie Jean Borich, "Radical Surprise: The Subversive Art of the Uncertain," (8.2)
        • George Estreich, "Feeling Seen: Blind Man’s Bluff, Memoir, and the Sighted Reader" (8.2)
        • Kristina Gaddy, "When Action is Too Much and Not Enough: A Study of Mode in Narrative Journalism" (8.2)
        • Marya Hornbacher, "Solitude Narratives: Towards a Future of the Form" (8.2)
        • Margot Kotler, "Susan Sontag, Lorraine Hansberry, and the ​Politics of Queer Biography " (8.2)
      • 8.2 Conversations >
        • Michael W. Cox , "On Two Published Versions of Joan Didion’s “Marrying Absurd” (8.2)
        • Hugh Martin, "No Cheap Realizations: On Kathryn Rhett’s “Confinements” (8.2)
      • 8.2 Pedagogy >
        • Liesel Hamilton, "How I Wish I’d Taught Frederick Douglass: An Examination of the Books and Conversations We Have in Classrooms" (8.2)
        • Audrey T. Heffers, "In the Room Where it Happens: Accessibility, Equity, and the Creative Writing Classroom" (8.2)
        • Daniel Nester, "Joan Didion and Aldous Huxley’s Three Poles" (8.2)
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