This seminar offers students a chance to think about the broader impact of one of the most consistently popular forms of writing, the memoir. While memoirs may cover a broad span of time–in which case they are often called autobiographies–more often than not they cover a specific experience or period in the author*s life. Our reading of the memoir will be even more specific, in two way. First, we will consider writing focused on incidents of personal trauma that are to some degree framed in terms of broad historical, cultural or political movements. We will ask how such writing, often called literary, is also a historical record. Second, we will consider memoirs by literary figures, some of whom are new to memoir-writing. We will ask how the memoir negotiates the self, not just or primarily by realistically reflecting lived experience, but by reflecting on the limits of narrative form itself. We will also read a short list of theoretical writing on autobiographical writing collected in a thin course packet available from The Ave Copy Center on University Avenue.

Course requirements will include active student participation, with each student asked to lead-off discussion at least once, reading and discussing other students* writing during a workshop week later in the quarter, and completing a final long essay (12-15 pages). The final three weeks of the course will be devoted to workshopping and writing the final essay.

Texts: The Fire Next Time (Baldwin); Scoundrel Time (Hellman); Patrimony (Roth); A Small Place and My Brother (Kincaid); Fun Home (Bechel).