Courses: American Autobiography: Inscribing Identity and Recasting History (WRPRH135A01)
Fall 2012
How do acts of self-representation create â or contest â notions of collective identity? How do constructions of gender, race, and class inform inscriptions of individual memories, familial histories, and national mythologies? What are the generative tensions between competing visions in graphic narratives as well as in âstraightâ autobiographies? In this course, we will read a range of texts which foreground conceptual and political issues regarding the art of self-inscription. In our discussions of Gertrude Steinâs Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Alison Bechdelâs âtragicomicâ Fun Home, and Art Spieglemanâs graphic narrative of his familyâs experiences in Hitlerâs Europe and in a post-W.W. II United States, we will investigate the ways in which different works cast authorial personas and make claims regarding the truth of oneâs own (and otherâs imagined) experience. In studying Malcolm Xâs conversion narrative alongside Maxine Hong Kingstonâs memoir of a âgirlhood among ghostsâ and Gary Sotoâs stories of growing up Chicano in the contested territories of California, we will look closely at how these narratives negotiate constructions of gender, class, and race in relation to the rhetorics of individual and national identity. Our turn to the work of Eric Michaelswill enable us to reflect on the interrelations between the configuration of oneâs environment and the constitution of oneâs body, as well as on our own acts of writing, reading, and interpretation.
Prerequisites: Open only to first-year students as assigned by the Director of College Writing.
Fulfills: HU FW Limit:15
DepartmentTaught By |
LocationHaverford, Stokes 207 Meeting TimesTTh 11:30-1:00 |