AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING in Spring 2021 (CL1099FB2)

In this class we consider (mostly) Francophone authors who have used narrative, essays, journals, correspondence, and playfully inventive forms to examine the self. The course is both critical and creative in emphasis: critical, since students develop skills of reading analytically, learning about the relationship of text to context and content to form; creative, since students practice autobiographical writing in genres deployed by their assigned authors. They thereby become more attentive readers of themselves while improving their ability to articulate this knowledge in writing. Authors studied may include Michael de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Xavier de Maistre, Jules Renard, Vincent van Gogh, Alejandra Pizarnik, Joe Brainard, Atel Adnan, Maryse Condé, and/or Scholastique Mukasonga.