General Course Objective
Although autobiographies regularly figure on bestseller lists,
how often do we ask ourselves the question, why do we like to
examine other people's lives? When Socrates said, "The unexamined
Life is not worth living" what did he mean? This course is
designed to examine the many critical issues that arise when we
approach the genre of autobiography. The seminar examines
the varying ways in which men and women in different societies
and times remember, recollect, and represent their lives in narrative
form. The seminar will address the following questions: what is
autobiography? To what extent can we read autobiography as history
or ethnography? Why has this "new" genre of "auto/bio/history"
become so popular? How does the intersection of gender, ethnicity,
race, and religious or political conviction with autobiography
undermine traditional assumptions about the genre's form and content?
Are there specific patterns of male and female consciousness across
cultures and times?
Description of Subject Matter
The course investigates the relationship between the autobiographer and the act of life-writing from a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective, drawing on texts from diverse cultures and the analytical tools of literary criticism, psychology, philosophy, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, and religion. We will read men's and women's autobiographies from a variety of traditions in North America, Europe, and Africa written during the last two hundred years in order to examine the intersection of autobiography with history. The seminar is designed to synthesize students' knowledge from a variety of backgrounds, such as history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and religion.
Method of Instruction and Evaluation
The seminar meets once a week. Members of the seminar are expected to come prepared to participate fully in discussions. Seminars will consist of two parts: in the first part there will be a presentation of background information on the author(s) and his or her context in history and society. The second part of the seminar will consist of a discussion of the primary text(s) and the secondary readings. Students will be expected to present material to the class on a regular basis and will submit one analytical research paper (15-20 pages) and one piece of creative writing. The course is taught in English.
Grade calculation
Oral presentations30%
Written work (20%x2) 40%
Active Participation 30%
1/24 Week 1 Introduction-the manifestations of memoir
How do we read and write memory?
Definition of terms.
Explanation of the problematic.
Is the practice of autobiography culturally embedded?
Student-writing in class.
Reflective exercises, see Gilmour, p. 43.
Assignment
Prepare to present to the seminar next week the main argument of the article you have chosen from the theoretical texts. As you are preparing your presentation bear in mind the following: What notion of the self does the author or critic propose writes the autobiography?
1/31 Week 2
Setting the theoretical base
How do we understand autobiography?
What is the function of memoir?
Who is the author of autobiography?
Notions of the autobiographical self as a western construct
In-class writing: Reflective exercises, Gilmour, p. 63
Secondary Readings
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"
Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" Textual Strategies:
Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism (Ithaca, 1979)
Katherine Goodman, "Women and Autobiography: Methodological
Considerations" in Dis/Closures:, i-xvii:
Georges Gusdorf, "Conditions and Limits of Autobiography":
Paul Jay, "Being in the Text: Autobiography and the Problem
of the Subject" Modern Language Notes 97 (1982): 1045-63
Philippe Lejeune, "The autobiographical contract" French
Literary Theory Today: A reader (Cambridge, 1982)
James Olney, "Some versions of Memory/Some versions of Bios:
The Ontology of Autobiography":
Sidonie Smith, "Woman's Story and the Engenderings of Self-Representation".
2/7 Week 3-The Memoir as Sacrament
The emergence of individuality--secularization of the sacredvita.
Reflective exercises: Gilmour, p. 90.
Primary Readings
St. Augustine,
Confessions
(xerox): Read Books 1,VIII, X
Peter Gilmour, The Wisdom of Memoir, Chapter 3
Suggested Secondary Readings
Shaun Irlam, "Showing Losses, Counting Gains: 'Scenes' from
Negative Autobiography" MLN 106 (1991): 997-1011.
Genevieve Lloyd, Introduction and Chapter 1, Being in Time:
Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature (Routledge,
1993)
2/14 Week 4--Chil
dhood and the
emergence of "selves"
Hermeneutics of life writing. Introduction of childhood as a time of character formation. Importance of history to the formation of selfhood and autobiography.
Reflective exercises, Gilmour, p. 111
Readings
J.-J. Rousseau,
Confessions
(selections)
Gilmour, Chapter 4
Secondary Readings
Paul John Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography
James Olney, "Transmogrifications of Life-Writing"
The Southern Review
David Bromwich, "A Note on the Romantic Self"
2/21 Week 5 --Women and Autobiography
Shaping forces of a woman's life--challenges and assumptions.
Readings
"Reminiscences" by Praskovia Tatlina, in Russia through Women's Eyes (xerox)
Margaretha Jungmann, Memoir , in Moravian Women's Memoirs
Secondary Readings
Katherine Faull, Introduction. Moravian Women's Memoirs
Shari Benstock, The Private Self
Sidonie Smith, A Poetics of Women's Autobiography
"Introduction" in Russia through Women's Eyes: Autobiography from Tsarist Russia, eds. Toby Clyman and Judith Vowles.
Katherine Goodman, "From Elisabeth to Meta: Epistolary
Autobiography and the Postulation of Self."
(Recommended for further reading: Lloyd, Mason, Nussbaum, Ricoeur,
Steussy)
2/28 Week 6--Autobiography and Race -- Slavery and the Self
Race as a constitutive moment of the self.
"Minority" ethnicity in western autobiography. Who makes
the subject?
Primary Reading
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself. (1845)
"Memoirs" by "Andrew" (xerox) and "Magdalene Beulah Brockden" in Moravian Women's Memoirs
Secondary Readings
Katherine Faull Eze, "Self-Encounters: Two 18th century African Memoirs from Moravian Bethlehem" in Crosscurrents: African Americans, Africa, and Germany in the Modern World, Camden House, 1998.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., "Race", Writing and Difference, Chicago, 1986
3/6 Week 7 -- Childhood, Colonialism, and Memory
Colonialism, history and identity: an intersection of forces. Fiction and history.
Reflective exercises: Gilmour, p. 132.
Reading:
Wole Soyinka, Aké: The Years of Childhood
Secondary Readings:
---, "Autobiography and African Literature" Special Issue. Research in African Literatures
James Olney, Tell me Africa: an approach to African literature. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973)
James Olney, "Aké: Wole Soyinka as Autobiographer"
Quayson, Ato. "Wole Soyinka and Autobiography as Political Unconscious"
---"Seminar on Akéwith Wole Soyinka" The Southern Review 23 (1987): 511-26.
3/20 Week 8--Autobiography, The Public Life, and History--A Problem of Referentiality
The role of memory and history in the narrative construction
of self. 
Intersection of novelistic discourse and memoir.
Political commitment and identity.
Readings
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Secondary Reading
Plomer, William, The South African Autobiography
3/27-- Week 9 --Women and African Autobiography
Primary Texts
Bessie Head, A Woman Alone, Heineman
Madikizela,
Nomzamo Winnie, Part of my soul went with him 1985 (xerox)
C.B. Davies, "Private Selves and Public Spaces: Autobiography and the African Woman"
H. Gengenbach, "Truth Telling and the Politics of Women's Life-History Research in Africa
4/3--Week 10--Native American Autobiographies--Life History, Anthropology, and Gender
Oral literature and autobiography. The problem of the amanuensis. Constructing an/other's life. The eyes of the ethnographer. Whose self is it, anyway?
Primary Reading
Introduction, Autobiography of FP, Memoir of Catharine Brown,
Black Elk Speaks, in Native American Autobiography, ed.
Arnold Krupat (U. Wisconsin Press, 1994) (xerox)
Secondary Reading
Peacock, James L. and Holland, Dorothy C., "The Narrated Self: Life Stories in Process" Ethos 21 (4): 367-383.
K. Hoppe, "Whose Life is it anyway-Issue of Representation in Life Narrative Texts
W.A. Weiss, "The Anthropologist as a Figure of Hegemony-An Introduction"
S. Vandergeest, "Anthropologists and Missionaries: Brothers under the Skin"
J. Clifford, "On Ethnographic Authority"
4/10 Week 11--Memoir and Trauma-the Holocaust
The necessity of remembering-the suppression of repression. Identity and persecution.
Reading
Elie Wiesel, Night . New York : Noonday Press, 1988, c1985.
Suggested Secondary Readings
Alvin H. Rosenfeld and Greenberg,-Irving, Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel
Avni, Ora "Beyond Psychoanalysis: Elie Wiesel's Night in Historical Perspective" in Kritzman-Lawrence-D. (ed. & introd.). Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and 'the Jewish Question' in France
Vanderwerken,-David-L. "Wiesel's Night as Anti-Bildungsroman"
Roth, John K, "From Night to Twilight: A Philosopher's Reading of Elie Wiesel" Religion and Literature
Plank, Karl A."The Survivor's Return: Reflections on Memory and Place" Judaism:: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 38:3 (1989): 263-277.
Matthiesen, Michon Marie, "Narrative of Suffering: Complementary Reflections of Theological Anthropology in Johann Metz and Elie Wiesel" Religion and Literature,
Ozsvath,-Zsuzsanna and Satz,-Martha , "The Audacity of Expressing the Inexpressible: The Relation between Moral and Aesthetic Considerations in Holocaust Literture"
Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 34:2 (1985): 197-210
Rubenstein, Richard L. "The Promise and the Pitfalls of Autobiographical Theology"
Culp, Mildred L. "Wiesel's Memoir and God Outside Auschwitz" Explorations in Ethnic Studies 4:1 (1981): 62-74
Ezrahi,-Sidra; Rosenfeld,-Alvin-H.; Greenberg,-Irving, "The Holocaust Writer and the Lamentation Tradition: Responses to Catastrophe in Jewish Literature" in Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel.. pp. 133-49
John D. Barbour, The Conscience of the Autobiographer
Richard Critchfield, When Lucifer cometh
4/17--Week 12-Conscience, Memory and Autobiography: the Third Reich.
How do we remember (our) evil? How does conscience affect memory? Literature as confessional.
Readings
Christa Wolf,Patterns of Childhood., Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Secondary Readings
John D. Barbour, The Conscience of the Autobiographer
Richard Critchfield, When Lucifer cometh
Norgard Klages, Look Back in Anger
Elaine Martin, "Autobiography, Gender, and the Third Reich."
4/24 Week 13--Gender, Identity, and Race --
May Opitz et al., Showing our Colors U. Mass. Press
Readings
Gisela Brinker-Gabler and Sidonie Smith, Writing New Identities
Tina Campt, "Afro-German Cultural Identity and the Politics of Positionality"
Françoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices, Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture.
Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, "De/colonization and the Politics of Discourse in Women's Autobiographical Practices"
5/1 Week 14--Presentations