ENGL 715 - Special Topics in Autobiographical Literature

3 Credits

515 Prerequisite(s): None An intensive study of American autobiography primarily from a historical perspective. This course will explore various forms of the genre, including the diary and journals, letters, slave narratives, essay, and memoir. Topics to be addressed include the ways autobiographies reveal or reflect the social history of the United States, the relationship of literacy to freedom in the African American community, and the reasons for the autobiography being the preferred form of first-generation immigrants. Larger theoretical issues include the nature of “truth” in autobiographical texts and the boundaries between fiction and autobiography.