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Academic Year 2002/2003

Women's Autobiography & Memoir
ENGL 121 FA

What is autobiography? Does autobiography describe, create, or deconstruct an identity? If any story we choose to tell must in some way be a story-details omitted consciously or unconsciously, memory unreliable, our own eyes used, our perspective imposed-what makes one text a "real" life story, while another text is fiction?

We will study various theories of what makes a text an "autobiography": Form? A pact between writer and reader? Intent? The elements of a single life organized into a whole? Or are there no rules? If so, when, if ever, is the reader justified in looking for a writer's life within a work? Are the rules of creation and analysis different for male and female autobiographers and memoirists? Is every person comfortable with the idea of writing a book driven by the word "I"? Why might this seem artificial to some?

We will redefine truth-telling. We will question traditions of coherent representation. We will read a variety of lives shaped into words by writers. In some of the works, the writer agrees to tell his or her life story, in others, the writer's life sneaks to the surface, oozes around the "real" story of the book.

You will learn to read some tough theory carefully and critically; you will do some of your own autobiographical writing to understand the risks and choices involved; you will bring your own ideas to difficult questions like, "Are we allowed to evaluate literary quality when we are reading a life?"

MAJOR READINGS

We will focus primarily on 20th-century books by women, most likely Maya Angelou's I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, Kim Chernin's IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE, Lucy Grealy's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE, Zora Neale Hurston's DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD, Alice Kaplan's FRENCH LESSONS, Maxine Hong Kingston's THE WOMAN WARRIOR, Annie Rogers' A SHINING AFFLICTION, and Gertrude Stein's THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS.

We will also read shorter autobiographical selections from other writers, including St. Augusti ne, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alex Haley and Malcolm X, Harriet Jacobs, Margery Kempe, Nabokov, Georges Perec, Rousseau, Thoreau, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Tobias Wolfe, as well as selections in autobiography theor y and feminist criticism.

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

3 shorter papers (3-4 pp.) and one major paper (8-10 pp.). One autobiographical project, to be discussed with the instructor.

You will keep a reading response log. Each time we read a piece of theory or criticism you will write a one-page response to share with the class. How you use this page is completely up to you: thoughts, rebuttals, lists of questions are all allowed.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-18-2003

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