"Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form." - John Berger

"A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become." - Fawn M. Brodie

In the words of a prominent cultural historian, after the social movements of the 1960s, U.S. culture — whose preeminent expressions generally endorsed nationalist ideologies of equal, democratic opportunity — can best be described as "decentered and fragmented." This course will explore one of the most telling literary manifestations of that fragmentation: modes of self-description that foreground a variety of experiences that did not represent the primary subject matter of canonical American autobiography. We will investigate how these experiences — of sexual trauma, of gendered and/or racial marginalization, of depression and its myriad physical and psychological consequences, of physical deformity, of the limitations of gendered, racial, and class constructions, etc. — reflect and/or complicate prevailing notions of (to cite some popular examples) a "postethnic" or "fragmented" national identity.

Course Requirements:

Weekly responses; a short paper (4-6 pages); a longer research essay (10 pages); and active class participation.

Intended Audience: