COLT 10.26 Autobiography and Memory
This course investigates the relationship between literature, autobiography and memory. We will read a wide range of autobiographies, fictions, and essays from the 20th and 21st Centuries that reflect on the acts of experiencing and remembering. These texts also address connected topics such as home, childhood, exile, trauma, violence, prejudice, illness, the urban experience, and the process of writing. We will start out with the European modernist tradition and trace how it is interpreted and cited at different times and in different places, be it in Germany, Brazil or Egypt. We will also discuss foundational questions of literary analysis, e.g., what constitutes authorship, how different genres of writing intersect, why edition history and translation matter, and in which ways literary canons are constituted (or questioned).
Instructor
Feuchtner