230503 Life Writings (S) (WiSe 2025/2026)

Please note that the session on 7th November will be a joint session with the Latina(o) cultures in the US seminar.

Narrating the self in autobiographical essays, memoirs, and multi-media texts is at the core of this seminar's critical interest. 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, Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen among others serve as matrix to explore in which ways life writing from the U.S., the Caribbean, Canada, and in the context of Latinx cultures in the US reflects and shapes the self in relation to the social. 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. This class will join the Latinx Culture in the US seminar on Nov 7 and Nov 21 (Raussert/Mausfeld). Student sesponse papers to all text material will stimulate further class discussion and smaller group work sessions.