Auto/biography: Narratives of the Self

People have written biographies and autobiographies for centuries, but only in recent years has the study of these forms become a major field of academic discussion and inquiry. The field opens up many important and interesting questions: What's the relationship between self-knowledge and the knowledge we have of others? How much can we in fact know about self or other? To what extent, and in what ways, does the sense of self we have derive from cultural norms and narratives? What sorts of plots do authors of biographies and autobiographies inherit or fashion in order to write narratives of the self? What role does ideology - gender, class, racial, colonial, ethnic - play in the narratives of self that we can, or might want to, write? In this unit we will discuss these and other issues in relation to a range of biographical and autobiographical texts.

Texts: 

White, Patrick Flaws in the Glass : A Self-Portrait 1981 Autobiography