239791 Telling Lives, Telling Stories: Ethnic Autobiographical Acts (BS) (SoSe 2012)

This course is an introduction to the complexity and richness of U.S. American ethnic literatures though autobiographical writing. From a comparative perspective, in the context of a course that inevitably goes beyond the boundaries of the U.S.A., we will study theoretical texts and the literary works of African American, Asian American, Jewish American, Native American, and Latin@ writers while testing the accuracy and limitations of Philippe Lejeune’ La pacte autobiographique which states that 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.” Some of the questions that will engage this course are: What do ethnic autobiographies tell about the sovereignty of the individual? How do they approach the transparency of individual “experience”? In how far do they complicate ideas about facticity, truth, lies, self, truthtelling?

Theoretical texts will be uploaded into the Stud. IP; the literary texts will be available on reserve at the library.

Bibliography

Required Reading

Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez