First-Year Studies: Self/Life/Writing: Studies in Autobiography

How does a self—the most intimate and elusive of concepts—become a text? What is the relationship between living a life and writing about it? What assumptions might authors and readers not share about the ways experience is endowed with symbolic value? For modernists and postmodernists particularly obsessed by the problems of identity and self-expression, the study of autobiography is a fascinating enterprise. This course is intended to introduce students to the autobiographical mode in literature. We will examine a rich variety of “life stories,” including memoirs, letters, and diaries that span from medieval times through the 21st century. Special attention will be paid to the following patterns and themes: the complex interplay between “truth” and “fiction,” sincerity and artifice, memory and representation; the nature of confessional writing; the use of autobiography as cultural document; and the role of gender in both the writing and reading of autobiographies. Among the authors to be included are St. Augustine, Kempe, Rousseau, Franklin, Douglass, Brent, Stein, Kafka, Nabokov, Wright, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Hurston, and Kingston. Students will submit one piece of autobiographical writing at the beginning of the course and will write short, frequent papers on the readings throughout the year.