Reading Life-Writing in the 20th and 21st centuries

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Life-writing is a capacious term that can be used to describe a variety of private and public statements about the self. Some of these are easily recognizable as representations of subjectivity (for example, memoirs, diaries, letters, self-portraits, graphic novels) and some less so (for example, legal testimony, blogs & vlogs, social media posts, resumes, medical forms have been read as part of the complex project of articulating subjectivity). Life-writing also positions itself at the intersection of fact and fiction (in autofiction) or the convergence of critical and creative (in autotheory or autocriticism). This course will attend to a wide variety of forms of life-writing and visual self-representations in dialogue with auto/biographical theory and theories of the subject in order to trace shifting notions of what counts as a self. A broad range of critical approaches to subjectivity and definitions of the autobiographical project will assist us as we attempt to map changing notions of the self. Writings may include works by Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel, Bobbie Baker, Maggie Nelson, works on life-writing drawn from auto/biography studies and theories of the self/subjectivity. Assignments will include writing critical essays of various lengths that examine primary materials in dialogue with works of criticism, keyword assignment, and in-class group projects. Note: as this is not a creative writing course, we will not be producing creative non-fiction, but there may be opportunities for brief critical/creative projects.