Women’s Life Writing (Histories of Women’s Writing in English)
MAEN, lecture, lit, Gender Track, 2nd year (ANGMA-G5)
Besides briefly tracing the literary/cultural history of autobiography, the course primarily aims to explore the diversity of the genre broadly referred to as life writing – taking as various guises as confessional diaries, letters, oral histories, popular group biographies, survival testimonies, scripto-therapeutical memoirs, case studies, biomythographies, coming-out narratives, filmic and photographic reminiscences, blogs, vlogs, social networking sites, etc. – through a selection of theoretical texts with a specific focus on the female perspective. Crucial dilemmas of postmodern feminism will be addressed by tackling borderlines and interactions of identity’s narrative construction and its enworlded, embodied performance, the responsible relationship to the past, trauma, individual and collective memory, imagined lives, fictionalization/truth-telling/historical documentation, and meta/textuality. Topics include: 1. Autobiography=Truth-telling, referentiality, teleology, transparency? A Canon to be challenged, 2. Genres of life narratives, 3. Traditions of women’s autobiography. Autogynography?, 4. Postmodern Autofictionalization and Autobiographical Authority, 5. Embodied autobiographical practices, 6. Confessional politics: women’s sexual self-representations, 7. Autobiographical Differences, 8. Autopathography (Neurosis, Abuse, Alzheimer’s, AIDS), 9. Life Writing, Memory and Trauma. Survivor Testimonies, 10. Life Writing Beyond the Ending. Popular Posthumous Biographical Narratives, Recreational Grieving, and the Case of Lady Di, 11. Second Life in Cyberspace, 12. Autobio-photography, Graphic Life Narratives, 13. Auto/biography and Doing Feminist Research
Syllabus
1. Orientation.
2. From Auto/biography to Self-/Life-Writing: A Canon to be Challenged
Auto/biography=Truth-telling, referentiality, teleology, transparency? Saint Augustine, Rousseau, Freud, Foucault, society of confession, technologies of the self, “what is an author?” LeJeune’s autobiographical pact, De Man’s autobiography as defacement, Barthes’ death of the author, St Theresa, Margery Kempe, Bildunsgroman, feminist autobiographical manifestos, “What difference does it make who is speaking?” What difference does it make of whom is being spoken? Writing the self vs writing the other vs writing the self as other. Collective authorship, #metoo
READ: *“52 genres of life narratives” in Smith & Watson, 2001.
3. Genres of Life Narrative, Traditions of Women’s Auto/biography. Autogynography?
READ: *“20 ways of reading life narratives.” in Smith & Watson, 2001.
*Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson: “Introduction. Situating Subjectivity in Women’s Autobiographical Practices.” & Smith&Watson1998PartII
4. Postmodern Autofictionalization and Auto/biographical Authority
READ * Leigh Gilmore. “The Mark of Autobiography: Postmodernism, Autobiography, and Genre”
5. Embodied Autobiographical Practices
READ: *Sidonie Smith. “The Universal Subject, Female Embodiment, and the Consolidation of Autobiography”
Woolf_A Sketch of the Past_Quotations for Discussion
6. Confessional politics: women’s sexual self-representations
READ: *Marion Bishop. “Confessional Realities. Body-Writing and the Diaries of Anne Frank”
7. Autopatography: censorship and self-fictionalization
READ: *Linda Anderson. “Sylvia Plath: I and You and Sylvia”
8. Auto/biographical Differences
READ: Biddy Martin.”Lesbian Identity and Autobiographical Difference(s)” in Smith&Watson
Extracts from Jeanette Winterson
9. Therapeutical self-writing
READ *Janice Haaken.”The Recovery of Memory, Fantasy and Desire in Women’s Trauma Stories, Feminist Approaches to Sexual Abuse and Psychotherapy.” in Smith&Watson
10. Life Writing, Memory and Trauma. Survivor Testimonies, Collective Authorship
11. Life writing as situated resistance against racial marginalisation
READ: *Vron Ware. “A Thinning of Skin. Writing on and against Whiteness“
Betty Bergland. “Postmodernism and the Autobiographical Subjectt: Reconstructing the ‘Other'” in Ashley et al.
12. Second Lives in Cyberspace
READ: Deidre Dawling Price_“’My kitchen, your kitchen’ Anne Sexton and Domestic Identity from Home to Homepages”
13. Autobio-photography, (Photo)Graphic Life Narratives
READ: *Paul Jay. “Posing: Autobiography and the subject of Photography” in Ashley at al.
Teresa Brus. “Recent zones of Portraiture: the Selfie”
Examples: Jo Spence, Cindy Sherman, Marina Abramovic, (Charles Martin Beauty and the „I-” of the Beholder” (Modern Fiction Studies 1994), Gunnthórunn Gudmundsdóttir: “Photographs in Autobiography”)
List of Key Terms for LifeWriting Course 2019
Recommended primary readings:
Kelly Sundberg. „It will look like a sunset.”
Sundberg & M. Ferrone. „I was raped, I was batterred”
Patricia Lockwood. „Rape Joke”
Neil Hilborn. „OCD.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnKZ4pdSU-s
Rachel Wiley. „Fat Joke”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFQ7zqn6j18
Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar. New York: Heinemann, 1963.
Virginia Woolf. „A Sketch of the Past,” 1939. in Moments of Being, 1976.
Janice Galloway. The Trick is to Keep Breathing. Polygon, 1989.
Delmore Schwartz. „The Heavy Bear who Goes with Me”
Suzanna Kaysen. Girl Interrupted. Turtle Bay, 1993.
Anne Sexton. Transformations, 1971.
David Small. Stiches, 2009
Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face,1994
Anne Frank. The Diary of a Young Girl. /The Secret Annex. 1949. 1956. Doubleday, 2003.
Diane Ackerman. The Zookeeper’s Wife, 2007.
Art Spiegelman. Maus, 1980
Jeanette Winterson. Oranges are not the Only Fruit. Pandora, 1985.
Jeanette Winterson. Why be happy when you can be normal? 2011.
Michel Foucault. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite. 1978.
Sarah McBride. Tomorrow Will Be Different, 2018
Audre Lorden. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, 1982.
Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior , Memoirs of Girlhood Among Ghosts, 1976.
Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, 2000-3
Craig Thompson, Blankets, 2003.
Simone de Beauvoir. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1958.
Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida, 1980
Cheryl Strayed, Wild. 2013
Kristen Roupenian. “Cat Person”
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Leigh Gilmore_Policing Truth, Confession, Confession, Gender, and Autobiographical Authority,”
Sidonie Smith_”Identity’s Body”
Linda Goldstein_”Raging in Tongues. Confession and Performance Art”
Ashley, Gilmore, Peters, eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism. 1994.
Couser, Thomas G. Altered Egos. Authority in American Autobiography.
Dibbell, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. 1999.
Eakin, Paul John .The Ethics of Life Writing. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2004.
Fleischman, Suzanne. „Gender, the Personal and the Voice of Scholarship”
France, Peter and William ST Clair (eds) Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography. OxfordUP, 2002
Gammel, Irene. Confessional politics: women’s sexual self-representations in life writing
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography. Trauma and Testimony.
Gudmundsdóttir, Gunnthórunn. Borderlines. Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Lifewriting. 2000.
Marcus, Laura. Auto/biographical discourses. Criticism, Theory, Practice. Manchester UP, 1994.
Peterson, Linda H. Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing. 1999.
Pile, Steve and Nigel Thrift, eds. Mapping the Subject. Geographies of Cultural Transformation, 1995.
Smith, Sidonie, Julia Watson, eds. Women, Autobiography, Theory. A Reader. U of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
—. Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. U of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Smith, Sidonie. Subjectivity, Identity and the Body. Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. 1993.
—. A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography. Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation
Stanley, Liz. The Auto/biographical I. Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography. 1992.
Swindells, Julia. The Uses of Autobiography, 1995., *“Autobiography and the Politics of the Personal”
Walkerdine, Valerie. “Subject to change without notice: Psychology, postmodernity and the popular”
Bibliography
Ashley, Gilmore, Peters, eds. Autobiography and Postmodernism. 1994.
Couser, Thomas G. Altered Egos. Authority in American Autobiography.
Dibbell, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. 1999.
Eakin, Paul John .The Ethics of Life Writing. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2004.
Fleischman, Suzanne. „Gender, the Personal and the Voice of Scholarship”
France, Peter and William ST Clair (eds) Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography. OxfordUP, 2002
Gammel, Irene. Confessional politics: women’s sexual self-representations in life writing
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography. Trauma and Testimony.
Gudmundsdóttir, Gunnthórunn. Borderlines. Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Lifewriting. 2000.
Marcus, Laura. Auto/biographical discourses. Criticism, Theory, Practice. Manchester UP, 1994.
Peterson, Linda H. Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing. 1999.
Pile, Steve and Nigel Thrift, eds. Mapping the Subject. Geographies of Cultural Transformation, 1995.
Smith, Sidonie, Julia Watson, eds. Women, Autobiography, Theory. A Reader. U of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
—. Reading Autobiography. A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. U of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Smith, Sidonie. Subjectivity, Identity and the Body. Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. 1993.
—. A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography. Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation
Stanley, Liz. The Auto/biographical I. Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography. 1992.
Swindells, Julia. The Uses of Autobiography, 1995., *“Autobiography and the Politics of the Personal”
Walkerdine, Valerie. “Subject to change without notice: Psychology, postmodernity and the popular”
Kelly Sundberg and Melissa Ferrone. https://www.guernicamag.com/i-was-raped-i-was-battered/
Patricia Lockwood. Rape Joke https://www.theawl.com/2013/07/patricia-lockwood-rape-joke/
*
Peterson, Linda H. Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing. 1999.
