Recording the Self: Gender Between Word and Image

Why do we feel compelled to record our lives? To keep diaries and take photos of ourselves? How is our self-perception affected by how others see us? This seminar examines aesthetic approaches to self-writing and self-recording in literature, photography, film, comics, and online media. Together, we will theorize how these genres of self-documentation have become gendered, as well as how race, gender, and sexuality shape identity formation and self-observation. Rather than presume a coherent identity or “inner self” that is expressed through these works, we will consider how the self multiplies, blurs, fragments, or becomes divided through the meta-biographical process of self-recording. Exploring the various ways that text and image refract and relay in unexpected directions, we will investigate self-referentiality as an ongoing temporal problematic, rather than a simple reflection. This course satisfies the WRIT requirement.