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Organization, Regulations, and Courses 2022-23


WGSS 51.07 Memoirs and the Work They Do

Memoir has been a popular genre in the United States, Latin America and Europe for at least the last twenty years. That popularity does not seem to be abating, despite critics’ claims that most recent memoirs are shallow, repetitive and badly written.  In this course we will review some of the history of life writing forms to parse out misogyny and elitism.  We will also learn how experts today understand life writing subgenres in print and other media, paying particular attention to experimentation and the line between fiction and non-fiction.  The focus of the course concerns how life writing is deployed in creating group identities, related to everything from addiction to victimhood, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality.  Texts include Coetzee's Boyhood,  Spiegelman's Maus, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Kacandes's Daddy's War, Modiano's Dora Bruder, Cho’s I’m the One that I Want, and Consalvi's Broadcasting the Civil War in El Salvador. Students will be asked to interview another about her or his life, do some writing about their own lives and bring examples to bear on our various topics from other cultures and languages than those represented on the syllabus.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

The Timetable of Class Meetings contains the most up-to-date information about a course. It includes not only the meeting time and instructor, but also its official distributive and/or world culture designation. This information supersedes any information you may see elsewhere, to include what may appear in this ORC/Catalog or on a department/program website. Note that course attributes may change term to term therefore those in effect are those (only) during the term in which you enroll in the course.