Revolutionary African-American Autobiography

Description

The memoir or autobiography is often cast as a personal narrative; this course proposes that the memoir, and in particular the African-American memoir, serves as not only the record of one's life, but also as having political agency and intention. Beginning with Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Malcolm X's Autobiography and Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of my Name, to Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, the course will consider the autobiography as an argument for political and social change; as a witness to one's life, it also enacts a re-visionary process of social justice. To what degree does the structure of the slave narrative continue to inform contemporary narratives? In what ways might there be a definitive element for African-American autobiographical writing? How do the community and writers interact and are interdependent? What is at stake for the African-American autobiographer? (McCorkle, offered alternate years to AFS 208) [Prerequisite: Open to Juniors and Seniors only, or permission of instructor.]