Writing the Self

This course seeks to examine the autobiography or memoir as a literary genre, an historical archive, and an individual/community narrative.
We will also consider how graphic novels, poems, and blogs can be seen as constructions of a specific kind of persona.
As the definition of autobiography has expanded over time, different kinds of memoirs and autobiographies have liberated Identity as a singular noun to self-consciously manage our plural or even desired identities and playfully experiment with different notions of selfhood.
In this course, we will examine the idea of “truth-telling” that is often associated with autobiographies. We also consider how the study of international autobiographies allows us a view of the local in the context of the global.