When James Frey had to go on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006 to confront accusations that his autobiography was not the “truth” and was made to apologize to his readers for duping them, literary studies scholars gasped: this was a moment in recent history with gave public attention to the question they had been entertaining for a long time, questions about what defined autobiographies as a genre. In this course, we will explore these questions by looking at different kinds of autobiographical texts, starting with narratives of the liberal subject of the late-18th century, the modernist autobiography, polyvocal postmodern autobiographies, graphic memoirs, and autobiographical practices on social network sites. Our aim is to understand the genre-specific variations in form and aesthetics as aspects of artistic expression, and to examine the representational strategies of self-hood from a literary studies angle.
The aim of this course is to enable students to further their understanding of literature; to formulate research questions; to pursue these questions in a comprehensive and well-crafted paper; to apply theories and methods to literary texts; to deduce general phenomena in literature from specific texts.
- Lehrende/r: Silvia Schultermandl