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Life Writing is ubiquitous in contemporary culture, and as such, it also comes into play in school teaching. While traditionally, the focus of scholars was on the literary genres of autobiography and biography (with autobiography prioritized), more recent research in literary and cultural studies has broadened and diversified the perspective in significant ways, happily crisscrossing the boundaries between the authentic vs. the fictional and exploring not only marginalized and postcolonial lives but also the various forms, genres, and media of life writing. This seminar will chime in with this turn to life writing as a literary genre and cultural practice. As a starting point, we shall be studying 20th century short biographies and diaries (e.g., Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being) to move on to such diverse forms and genres as obituaries, illness narratives, graphic memoirs, contemporary biofiction, self-writing in blogs, and finally (fictional) ego-documents and writing practices in the teaching of English at school level.
Among the core texts are:
- Virginia Woolf,Moments of Being (1985) [Harvest Book Edition; please obtain your own copy]
- Alan Moore: The Spiral Cage (1990). [Please obtain your own copy.]
More literature to be announced at the beginning of term. A Moodle course with PDFs of shorter texts will be available. |
