ENGLISH 311 - Studies in Nonfiction Prose

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

Autobiography Full course for one semester. This course will introduce problems of narrative through the study of autobiography and memoir. We will examine various strategies writers employ to describe the self, whether in isolation or in relationship to family and the surrounding culture. We will focus on the language of self-representation; the function and expression of memory; problems of truth, fiction, and lying in autobiography; the nature of the confessional act; parental secrecy and the older child's revelation as avenues to self-discovery; the relation of performativity to identity; the ways autobiographers give symbolic meaning and form to their experience; and the relation of gender to self-representation. We'll look at ways writers experiment with diverse forms, challenging conventional or traditional modes of life-writing, such as graphic autobiographies. And we will discuss whether this kind of writing serves anything like a therapeutic purpose. There will also be readings in autobiographical theory. Some possible texts include Nabokov ? Speak, Memor y; De Quincey 's Confessions of an English Opium-Eat er, Gertrude Stei n's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman War rior, Georges Pe rec 's W, Michel Le iris' Ma nhood, Kathryn Harr ison's Th e Kiss, Mary G ordon's Th e Shadow Man, Wilko mirski's F ragments, and Art Spi egelma n's Maus. Prerequisite: two English or literature courses. CoThe English Enlightenment and the Modern Intellectual Full course for one semester. In this course we will read a variety of major 18th-century authors whose work opens the modern debate on what it means to be a literary intellectual. Major authors will include Joseph Addison, David Hume, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Mary Wollstonecraft, with some contemporary contributions from writers including Susan Sontag. We will also read critical work attempting to define what enlightenment means, from Immanuel Kant, Horkheimer and Adorno, Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas. Prerequisite: two English courses at the 200 level or above, or consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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