This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Why is the memoir such a popular genre in contemporary literature? Are memoirs individualistic, sentimental and voyeuristic (what is often dismissed as “misery literature”) or can they have strong ethical impulses and powerful real-world effects? This course critically examines the significance of the memoir – a first-person account of a part of one’s life, often written by someone not previously known as a writer– in late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century literature. Through reading a range of recent memoirs we will examine the themes, techniques and debates that have come to characterise this genre. Drawing on a range of aesthetic, theoretical and cultural perspectives, we will approach these memoirs both as literature – as rich sources for critical analysis and capable of transforming academic criticism – and in terms of their appeal, and sometimes controversial reception, within present-day mass audiences. We will also expand our discussion of memoirs to consider graphic narrative and film.
Total Contact Hours: 30
Private Study Hours: 270
Total Study Hours: 300
100% coursework:
Two essays of 3000 words each (45% each)
Seminar performance mark (10%)
Thomas Couser, Memoir: An Introduction (2012)
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)
Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly (1997)
James Frey, A Million Little Pieces (2003)
Jonathan Caouette, Tarnation (2003) [film]
Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003)
Jackie Kay, Red Dust Road (2010)
Sarah Leavitt, Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (2010)
Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave: A Memoir of Life after the Tsunami (2013)
Films
Tarnation, dir. Jonathan Caouette (2003)
The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, dir. Julian Schnabel (2007)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1. critically evaluate a variety of contemporary memoirs, primarily from North America, including graphic memoir and docu-memoir (film);
2. demonstrate a systematic understanding of the literary history of the memoir, its connection to other nonfictional forms (for example, autobiography), and of recent developments/variants of the genre;
3. closely engage with a range of established theoretical, aesthetic, and cultural perspectives (including interdisciplinary approaches) to scrutinise the aesthetic and cultural work of the genre and its appeal to present-day mass audiences;
4. demonstrate sophisticated analytical skills, including close textual analysis, to examine the different forms, techniques, and themes (trauma, disability, illness, family relationships, race, sexuality, history) deployed in contemporary memoirs;
5. consolidate and extend their capacity to structure nuanced arguments about debates concerning the ethics of life writing, questions of truth/authenticity, celebrity and (neo)confessional culture, and how contemporary memoirs reconfigure the relationship between the "private" and the "public".
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1. apply sophisticated close reading techniques to a range of texts and to make productive and complex comparisons between them;
2. display strong presentation skills and an ability to actively participate in group discussions;
3. show an increased capacity for self-directed research and the ability to discuss, evaluate and creatively deploy secondary critical and theoretical perspectives making use of appropriate scholarly sources;
4. frame and identify appropriate research questions and to construct original, clear and well-substantiated arguments.
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