*This course is cross-listed with BCULST 587, and takes place on the UW Bothell Campus

This course explores differences, similarities, and intersections among diverse forms of writings about selves and subjectivities: diary, chronicle, memoir, witnessing, autobiography, and autoethnography. We will take up the double-sided issue of representation (as democratic value and as presentational means), so important to the writing of selves and subjectivities in their relationship to larger social and cultural orders. While autobiography is a recognizable genre within literary studies with its own (changing) canon of texts, and critical exegesis, autoethnography is a touted form within cultural studies. We will ask how these two related ventures speak to each other, what they might learn from each other, and how they are engaged in different kinds of projects. Among the texts we will consider at some length are Rigoberta Menchu's, I, Rigoberta Menchu; Carol Rambo's autoethnographies; Marguerite Duras's fictional and autobiographical exposes; Susan Howe's documentary pieces, and Renee Gladman's minimalistic fictions. Both Rambo and Gladman have been invited to UWB to read and discuss their work during the course of winter quarter. Students will have an opportunity of studying and presenting an autobiographical work of their choice and will be asked to write an autobiographical or autoethnographic piece.