Teaching Life Writing Texts
- Editors: Miriam Fuchs, Craig Howes
- Pages: ix & 400 pp.
- Published: 2008
- ISBN: 9780873528207 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9780873528191 (Hardcover)
“Howes and Fuchs have spanned a remarkable breadth in terms of where their writers come from, the sorts of schools they teach in, and the life writing issues on which they focus. The result is a veritable gold mine for both teaching and research.”
—Susanna Egan, author, Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography
“This book is an invaluable pedagogical and theoretical resource. The extensive bibliography . . . is truly impressive.”
—MLR
The past thirty years have witnessed a rapid growth in the number and variety of courses and programs that study life writing from literary, philosophical, psychological, and cultural perspectives. The field has evolved from the traditional approach that biographies and autobiographies were always about prominent people—historically significant persons, the nobility, celebrities, writers—to the conception of life writing as a genre of interrogation and revelation. The texts now studied include memoirs, testimonios, diaries, oral histories, genealogies, and group biographies and extend to resources in the visual and plastic arts, in films and videos, and on the Internet. Today the tensions between canonical and emergent life writing texts, between the famous and the formerly unrepresented, are making the study of biography and autobiography a far more nuanced and multifarious activity.
This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching builds on and complements earlier work on pedagogical issues in life writing studies. Over forty contributors from a broad range of educational institutions describe courses for every level of postsecondary instruction. Some writers draw heavily on literary and cultural theory; others share their assignments and weekly syllabi. Many essays grapple with texts that represent disability, illness, abuse, and depression; ethnic, sexual and racial discrimination; crises and catastrophes; witnessing and testimonials; human rights violations; and genocide. The classes described are taught in humanities, cultural studies, social science, and language departments and are located in, among other countries, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, Eritrea, and South Africa.
Timothy Dow Adams
Arturo Arias
Thomas J. D. Armbrecht
Kathleen Boardman
Alison Booth
Sarah Brophy
Trev Lynn Broughton
Suzanne L. Bunkers
David Caplan
Sandra Chait
Julia Clancy-Smith
Hilary Clark
Julie F. Codell
Judith Lütge Coullie
G. Thomas Couser
Martin A. Danahay
Kate Douglas
Richard Freadman
Leigh Gilmore
Gabriele Helms
Cynthia Huff
Georgia Johnston
Margaretta Jolly
David Houston Jones
Daniel Heath Justice
Joanne Karpinski
Jeraldine R. Kraver
John Mepham
Susannah B. Mintz
Joycelyn K. Moody
Ghirmai Negash
Gail Y. Okawa
Frances Freeman Paden
Iulia Patrut, Kristine Peleg
James W. Pipkin
Roger J. Porter
Katrina M. Powell
Sarah Sceats
Stanley Schab
Thomas R. Smith
Gary Totten
Gillian Whitlock
Kenneth Womack
Michael W. Young
Acknowledgments (xi)
Introduction (1)
Part I: Generic Approaches
Literary Studies
Introduction to World Narrative (23)
Slipping Away, Sliding Around: Teaching Autobiography as—and Not as—History and Genre (32)
Life Writing and Biographical Fiction: Contemporary Teaching and Learning Strategies (38)
Diaries and Diarists (45)
Teaching Travel Writing as Life Writing (53)
Teaching “The Lives of the Victorians”: A Historical Approach to Changing Conventions of Life Narrative (59)
Modernist American Literature and Life Writing (68)
The Subject of Drugs (74)
Sports Autobiographies and American Culture (81)
Writing the Self (91)
The Generic Instability of Contemporary Life Writing in Canada (99)
A + B ≠ B + A: Teaching Autobiographies and Biographies in Pairs (107)
Biography, Oral History, Autobiography: A Graduate Course (115)
Interdisciplinary Approaches
A Text of Their Own: Life Writing as an Introduction to Undergraduate English Studies (122)
Teaching Rachel Calof ’s Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains (129)
Reading, Writing, Performing Life Writing: Multiple Constructions of Self (135)
“In My Life”: Growing Up with the Beatles from Liverpool to Abbey Road (143)
The Whole Picture: Using Nonliterary Forms of Artistic Production to Teach Life Writing (151)
Life Writings as New Cultural Contexts for the Meanings of Art and Artist (161)
Emblematic Sculptures: The Artwork of Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the Life Writing Classroom (171)
A Graduate Seminar in Life Writing: Posing and Composing Lives (180)
Additional Resources for Teaching Life Writing Texts: Generic Approaches (191)
Part II: Cultural Approaches
Times and Places
The Many Voices of Creation: Early American and Canadian Life Writing (195)
Experiencing Collaborative Autobiography (201)
Teaching Contemporary Australian Autobiography (208)
Located Subjects (214)
Life Writing in the New South Africa (221)
An Undergraduate and Graduate Colloquium in Social History and Biography in the Modern Middle East and North Africa (233)
Teaching Multicultural Life-History Writing Texts through Technology’s Third Space: Reflections on a University of Washington–University of Asmara Collaboration (239)
Ethnographic and Autoethnographic Approaches
No Indian Is an Island: On the Ethics of Teaching Indigenous Life Writing Texts (252)
Women, Race, Reading, and Feeling: Postmemory in Undergraduate Studies of Slave Narratives (260)
Olaudah Equiano and the Concept of Culture (270)
Eastern European Oral Narratives of the Walled-Up Wife and Their Retelling in Recent Life Writing Texts (277)
Discerning Diversity in American Lives (286)
Reading and Writing Ethnography (292)
Close Encounters: (Re)Teaching Ethnic Autobiography as Autoethnography (303)
Teaching Testimonio: A New, Ex-Centric Design Emerges (310)
Gendered and Sexual Orientation Approaches
Anxiety of Choice: Teaching Contemporary Women’s Autobiography (318)
Teaching Jo Spence’s Putting Myself in the Picture: Pedagogy and Life Writing in and outside the University (327)
Teaching Queer Lives (336)
Cultures of Life Writing (343)
Illness and Disability Approaches
Quality-of-Life Writing: Illness, Disability, and Representation (350)
Teaching Women’s Depression Memoirs: Healing, Testimony, and Critique (359)
What Do We Teach When We Teach Trauma? (367)
Additional Resources for Teaching Life Writing: Cultural Approaches (374)
Life Writing Resources for Teachers (376)
Notes on Contributors (383)
Index (391)
