230583 "Get a Life!" Fabricating Autobiographies in the Americas (S) (WiSe 2009/2010)

By going beyond the confines of the nation and regions, this course stresses the historical interconnectedness of the American continent (the Caribbean, Central, Latin, and North America). The Americas are conceived as transnational dynamic spaces of conflict, domination, dialogue, resistance, negotiation, fragmentation, solidarity where individuals and groups share dreams, experiences, problems, struggles, experiences, imaginaries. Thinking autobiography chronologically (from the discovery to contemporary times) across the heterogeneous American continent, this VERY READING INTENSIVE course will trace the development of autobiographical writing in the hemisphere. Some of the questions to address throughout the course will be: How is the American continent perceived in personal narratives? What dreams are projected on the continent? What American Dreams are dreamed by autobiographical writers in the Americas? Who is included in those dreams? Who is excluded from them? For that matter, who dares to dream American dreams in the Americas? How do, for instance, US American Dreams differ from, say, Caribbean, Central or Latin American Dreams?

A reader will be made available at the beginning of the course.

Bibliography

Students are strongly encouraged to start reading the literary texts to their earliest convenience.

Required Reading:

Catalina De Erauso. Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan

Kincaid, Jamaica. The Autobiography of My Mother

Marjorie Agosín. A Cross and a Star

Menchú, Rigoberta and Elizabeth Burgos-Debray. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala.

Guevara, Ernesto Che. The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey.

Poniatowska, Elena. Here’s to you, Jesusa!

Jesus, Carolina Maria de. Bitita’s Diary: The Childhood Memories of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Ed. Robert M. Levine. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.