This course is intended to introduce students to a series of twentieth century life narratives in the context of contemporary Auto/biography theory and practice. Students will explore concepts of memory and self-fashioning in life writing, together with issues of gender, colonialism, race, cross-cultural encounter and displacement as represented in autobiographical texts. Special attention may be paid to life narratives dealing with traumatic personal and historical events. The course will provide the opportunity to investigate and reflect on obstacles that writers confront in narrating their lives, the strategies they adopt and the gaps and silences that characterize autobiographical writing.
