Lehrende/r: Micha Edlich
Veranstaltungsart: Proseminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan: Proseminar I
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 45
Anmeldegruppe: PS I AS
Prioritätsschema: Senatsrichtlinie Zulassung gemäß Richtlinie über den Zugang zu teilnahmebeschränkten Lehrveranstaltungen vom 07. März 2007. Nähere Informationen hierzu entnehmen Sie bitte www.info.jogustine.uni-mainz.de/senatsrichtlinie
Inhalt: This undergraduate seminar serves as an introduction to life writing in general and the American tradition of this genre in particular. Students will learn about the most important theoretical debates and problems in the contemporary academic discourse on life writing, and they will acquire the critical terminology to interpret a broad variety of autobiographical and biographical narratives. They will develop these skills by engaging with both classic texts, for example the autobiographies of Thomas Shepard, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, or Malcolm X, as well as recent additions to the canon, such as Art Spiegelman’s relational graphic life narrative _Maus_ (1986, 1992) or Terry Tempest Williams’s ecobiography _Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place_ (1991). Students will read these and several other life narratives in a chronological sequence, and they will therefore also learn how this genre and related conceptions of human identity have changed in the course of American literary history. Required Texts Douglass, Frederick. _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass_. Ed. William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely. Norton Critical Editions. New York: Norton, 1996. Print. (ISBN-10: 0- 393-96966-5) Franklin, Benjamin. _Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography_. Ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall. Norton Critical Editions. New York: Norton, 1986. Print. (ISBN-10: 0-393-95294-0) Malcolm X. _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_. With the assistance of Alex Haley. 1965. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2001. Print. (ISBN-10: 0-14-118543-0) Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. _Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives_. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Print. (ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-6986-8) Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. London: Penguin, 2003. Print. (ISBN-13: 978-0-141-01408-1) Thoreau, Henry David. _Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings_. Ed. William Rossi. 3rd ed. Norton Critical Editions. New York: Norton, 2008. Print. (ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93090-0) Williams, Terry Tempest. _Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place_. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage-Random House, 2001. Print. (ISBN-13: 978-0-679-74024-7) All of these books will be available on the reserve shelf in the departmental library; additional (excerpts taken from other) life narratives will be posted as PDF files on the ReaderPlus course website.
