For much of my teaching career, I've watched people talk themselves out of their own stories because they don't think they are important enough, dramatic enough, or polished enough to share. I see it in my composition classroom, where students often insist their lives didn't count as material worth reading or writing about. I see it at gatherings, too, where families default to safe, often told and already known stories because an unscripted memory can be uncomfortable to say out loud.
Ordinary memories can be the …
That belief comes from research as much as it comes from experience. Oral history and composition studies ..xxx: that lived experience is a legitimate form of knowledge, and that helping someone put words to it is an act of service. HeldFast’s role is to create conditions for someone's authentic stories to emerge, and then to help hold onto them once they do.
HeldFast puts that belief into practice while families gather to remember someone, but the stories in the room are at risk of staying unspoken.
The name itself comes from an old nautical term: to hold fast is to secure a line and stay steady against the pull of the current.
HeldFast emerges directly from my work as an English professor specializing in rhetoric, composition, and narrative practice. For two decades, my teaching and scholarship have centered on how individuals use language to make meaning, negotiate identity, and participate in private, familial, and civic lives.
HeldFast extends composition pedagogy to our working lives and deaths by applying scholarly frameworks of oral history to real-world contexts of legacy and transition.
In the writing classroom, I guide students through reflective, narrative, and inquiry-based writing, helping them articulate experiences they did not initially believe “counted” as knowledge. This pedagogical foundation informs HeldFast’s methodology.
As a practitioner-scholar, I approach storytelling as an act of service, rather than an extraction or performance. My role is to create conditions in which stories can emerge for oral or written preservation.
This work reflects my belief that lived experience constitutes a legitimate form of knowledge, and that preserving it is a civic act.
Rooted in Research
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Practitioner-Scholar Statement
HeldFast emerges directly from my work as an English professor specializing in rhetoric, composition, and narrative practice. For two decades, my teaching and scholarship have centered on how individuals use language to make meaning, negotiate identity, and participate in private, familial, and civic lives.
HeldFast extends composition pedagogy to our working lives and deaths by applying scholarly frameworks of oral history to real-world contexts of legacy and transition.
In the writing classroom, I guide students through reflective, narrative, and inquiry-based writing, helping them articulate experiences they did not initially believe “counted” as knowledge. This pedagogical foundation informs HeldFast’s methodology.
As a practitioner-scholar, I approach storytelling as an act of service, rather than an extraction or performance. My role is to create conditions in which stories can emerge for oral or written preservation.This work reflects my belief that lived experience constitutes a legitimate form of knowledge, and that preserving it is a civic act.
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Mitford, Jessica. The American Way of Death, Simon & Schuster, 1963.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+American+Way+of+Death+Jessica+Mitford
Doughty, Caitlin. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=From+Here+to+Eternity+Caitlin+Doughty
Lynch, Thomas. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Link: https://www.thomaslynch.com/book/the-undertaking-life-studies-from-the-dismal-trade/
Lynch, Thomas. Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality. W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Link: https://www.thomaslynch.com/book/bodies-in-motion-and-at-rest-on-metaphor-and-mortality/
Gallagher, Tess. Dear Ghosts. Graywolf Press, 2008.
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Selected Scholarship
Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization. Cambridge UP, 2011.
Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. Oxford UP, 1998.
Frank, Arthur W. Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology. U of Chicago P, 2010.
McAdams, Dan P. “The Psychology of Life Stories.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 5, no. 2, 2001, pp. 100–122.
Plummer, Ken. Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism. SAGE, 2001.
Portelli, Alessandro. The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. SUNY Press, 1991.
Ritchie, Donald A. Doing Oral History. 3rd ed., Oxford UP, 2015.
Shopes, Linda. “Oral History.” The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 4th ed., SAGE, 2011.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Reflection in the Writing Classroom. Utah State UP, 1998.