ENG 331-01 - Studies in American Prose II

4 credits (Spring)

“Experimental memoirs.” The last thirty years of the 20th Century have been called “the age of memoir.” Since then, the narrativization of self and identity under the rubric of “truth” has continued unabated. In this seminar, we will read memoirs that conspicuously interrogate the conventions of the form. How might the genre be manipulated to reveal new insights about memory and the meaning that is created while looking back? The notion of a literary experiment-“to make a discovery or to test a hypothesis”-can help us to move beyond memoir’s clichés, chief among them a simple effort to recapture the past. Possible authors include Alison Bechdel, Sarah Broom, Eli Clare, Roxanne Gay, Stephen Kuusisto, Margo Jefferson, Tito Mukhopadhyay, Maggie Nelson, Esmee Wang, Joan Wickersham.

Prerequisite: ENG 227, ENG 228, ENG 229, ENG 231, ENG 232, or ENG 273.
Instructor: Savarese