Reading Schedule:

August 29th:

Introduction

 Revelation, Memory, Testimony

 September 5th:

No classes scheduled at the Graduate Center

 September 12th:

 Woolf, Moments of Being (1972)

 Paul de Man, “Autobiography as De-Facement.”  MLN 94. 5 (1979): 919-930 [On reserve].

 Smith and Watson, “Life Narrative: Definitions and Distinctions;” “Autobiographical Subjects;” and “Autobiographical Acts” from Reading Autobiography (2^nd edition): 1-102. [Electronic Resource available through the GC Library].

 Linda Anderson, “Introduction” and “Historians of the Self” from Autobiography (London and New York: Routledge, 2001) [Electronic Resource available through the GC Library].

 Auto/Biography

 September 19th:

Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918) [On Reserve]

Excerpts from Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865) (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1864.  [On Reserve]

Laura Marcus, “Bringing the Corpse to Life: Woolf, Strachey and the Discourse of the ‘New Biography.'”  Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice.  (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994): 56-90. [On Reserve].

Excerpts from Nigel Hamilton, Biography: A Brief History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2007): 1-167 [On Reserve].

September 26^th:

Malcolm X, Autobiography (1965)

 Paul John Eakin, “Registers of Self,” from How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves.  Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999: 1-42.

 Smith and Watson, “A History of Autobiography Criticism, Part I: Theorizing Autobiography” and “A History of Autobiography Criticism, Part II: Expanding Autobiography Studies” from Reading Autobiography (2^nd edition): 193-212. [Electronic Resource available through the GC Library].

October 3^rd:

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011)

 October 10th:

Marable continued.

 Relational Auto/biography & Experiments in Form

 October 17th:

Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)

 October 24th:

Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of Woman (1798)

 Paul John Eakin, “Relational Selves, Relational Lives: Autobiography and the Myth of Autonomy,” from How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves.  Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999: 43-99.

 Post Secret website and books: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

 October 31st:

Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

 Smith and Watson, “A Tool Kit: Twenty-four Strategies for Reading Life Narratives,” and “Sixty Genres of Life Narrative,” 235-286 [Electronic Resource available through the GC library].

 November 7th:

Cha, Dictee (1982)

 November 14th:

Class cancelled

 November 21st:

Doty, Heaven’s Coast (1996)

 November 28^th:

Thanksgiving; class cancelled

 Life Writing and the Novel

 December 5th:

Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

 Optional Additional Reading:

Ted Hughes: ‘The Rabbit Catcher’ & ‘The Shot,’ from Birthday Letters (1998) [On reserve]

Sylvia Plath: ‘The Rabbit Catcher,’ ‘Daddy’ & ‘Lady Lazarus,’ from Collected Poems (1981) [On reserve]

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (on reserve)

 December 12th:

Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (2007)

 December 19th:

Wrap-up/ Paper workshop