230290 Latin@ Autobiography (BS) (SoSe 2016)

In his work La pacte autobiographique Philippe Lejeune states autobiography is “retrospective prose story that a real person relates about his or her own experience, in which he or she gives emphasis to his or her individual life, and to the history of his or her personality.” With Lejeune’s thoughts as a backdrop, the course engages autobiographical acts by writers of diverse Latin@ communities—e.g., Chican@, Mexican American, Argentine American, Dominican American, Puerto Rican—as we explore how memory and experience as well as the intersection of ethnicity, race, gender, class, and sexuality in the construction of identities complicate the intellectual’s assumptions about the self and the literary genre that his characterization seeks to elucidate. Some of the questions that will engage this course are: What do Latin@ autobiographies tell about the sovereignty of the individual? How do they approach the transparency of individual “experience”? In how far do the complicate ideas about facticity, truth, lies, self, truthtelling? Required readings include theoretical texts by theorists such as Thomas G. Couser, Paul De Man, Sidonie Smith, Joan W. Scott, Timothy Dow Adams, Lourdes Torres.