230321 Life Writing (S) (SoSe 2022)

Life Writing

Narrating the self in autobiographical essays, memoirs, and multi-media texts is at the core of this seminar's critical interest. The class follows a four-step structure. In the beginning we study writings that reflect on the overall concept of life writing as a theoretical framework for further discussion and text analysis. Textual and media examples from writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Sin Lui Far, James Baldwin, Edwidge Danticat, David Chariandy, Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen among others serve as matrix to explore in which ways life writing from the U.S., the Caribbean, and Canada reflects and shapes the self in relation to the social. In a third step all students will participate in a two-day international conference (June 24/25) in which scholars present their work-in-progress at the Center for InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University. Students will take minutes of selected presentations and engage in a critical dialogue with one selected presentation of their choice that will be presented in a fourth step in small group presentations during two class sessions after the conference. The objective of this seminar is to familiarize students with various expression of life writing and the latter’s importance for reflecting and reinventing the social in the American hemisphere.