Stories of Home

Place, Identity, Exile

Contributions by Jennifer L. Adams, Myrdene Anderson, Timothy Baird, Tessa W. Carr, Devika Chawla, Erik Garrett, Craig S. Gingrich-Philbrook, Sean Gleason, Anne M. Harris RMIT University, Stacy Holman Jones, Caryn Medved, Amardo Rodriguez, Rebecca Mercado Thornton, Jonathon Wyatt, Tessa Wyatt Edited by Devika Chawla, Stacy Holman Jones

Publication date:

17 September 2015

Length of book:

256 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

233x160mm
6x9"

Stories of Home: Place, Identity, Exile offers a window into the distinct ways that home is theorized and conceptualized across disciplines. The essays in this volume consider how people “speak” and “story” home in their everyday lives, why “home” is central to our notion of who we are, and how making home a unit of analysis in research makes a strong conceptual contribution to the field of communication. This collection engages home from diverse contexts and disparate philosophical underpinnings; at the same time the essays converse with each other by centering their foci on the relationship between home, place, identity, and exile. Home—how we experience it and what it says about the selves we come to occupy—is an exigent question of our contemporary moment. Stories of Home: Place, Identity, Exile delivers timely and critical perspectives on these important questions.

Communication scholars Devika Chawla and Stacy Holman Jones have gathered writings that examine the meaning of home. Most of the contributors are communication scholars, but anthropology, art, education, and counseling are also represented. The collection is full of captivating, rich personal stories providing insight into the authors’ lives and the connection between personal experience and their perspectives of the meaning of home. For example, home can be a physical place in which banal chores and habits are performed or an integral part of the self that is constructed, to mention just two of many possibilities. The contributors' varied backgrounds lead to a variety of perspectives that span economic, ethnic, and regional boundaries. Taken together, these musings about home and the diversity of views of what home means to different people offer a coherent and engaging account of home from philosophical and personal perspectives. A valuable resource for those interested in the elusive nature of home. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. General readers.