Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB)
Semester 2 / 2010

Texts

Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance!$!Obama, B.!$! !$!Three Rivers Press!$!
Elegy for Iris!$! Bayley, J.!$! !$! St Martin's!$! 1999
y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

Modern American memoirs!$! Dillard, A. and Conley, C. (eds)!$! !$! Harper Collins!$! 1995

Description

Compelling autobiographical writing requires a mysterious and exciting combination of craft, authorial 'page presence' (the autobiographer's equivalent of 'stage presence') and communicative passion. Successful autobiography can take myriad forms: extended or relatively brief; comic and/or tragic; stylistically conventional or experimental; introspective or more outward-turned; highly personal and/or inclined to see the self as a culturally shaped and embedded being. This subject does not encourage you to adopt any particular template of autobiographical writing but rather to discover what sort of autobiographical writer you are or wish to be. Through workshops, critical discussions of course autobiographical texts, feedback on written work and other means the subject aims to help you find your autobiographical 'voice' and to master the aspects of autobiographical craft that will enable you to tell a sophisticated and compelling autobiographical story.

Assessment

one 3,000-word assignment 60%

one 2,000-word assignment 40%

Other Details

Offered in: 2009
Current Campus: Bundoora
Levels: Undergraduate
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