Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life NarrativesWith the memoir boom, life storytelling has become ubiquitous and emerged as a distinct field of study. Reading Autobiography, originally published in 2001, was the first comprehensive critical introduction to life writing in all its forms. Widely adopted for undergraduate and graduate-level courses, it is an essential guide for students and scholars reading and interpreting autobiographical texts and methods across the humanities, social sciences, and visual and performing arts. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of Reading Autobiography is the most complete assessment of life narrative in its myriad forms. It lays out a sophisticated, theoretical approach to life writing and the components of autobiographical acts, including memory, experience, identity, embodiment, space, and agency. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson explore these components, review the history of life writing and the foundations of autobiographical subjectivity, and provide a toolkit for working with twenty-three key concepts. Their survey of innovative forms of life writing, such as autographics and installation self-portraiture, charts recent shifts in autobiographical practice. Especially useful for courses are the appendices: a glossary covering dozens of distinct genres of life writing, proposals for group and classroom projects, and an extensive bibliography. |
Contents
Definitions and Distinctions | 1 |
2 Auto biographical Subjects | 21 |
3 Auto biographical Acts | 63 |
4 Life Narrative in Historical Perspective | 103 |
5 In the Wake of the Memoir Boom | 127 |
6 The VisualVerbalVirtual Contexts of Life Narrative | 167 |
Theorizing Autobiography | 193 |
Expanding Autobiography Studies | 213 |
Other editions - View all
Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives Sidonie Smith,Julia Watson No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
African African American American Angela's Ashes archives argues artist audience auto autobio autobiographical acts autobiographical narrative autobiographical subject autobiographical writing Autobiography autoethnography become bildungsroman biography body Books captivity narrative century childhood collective colonial concept Confessions contemporary contexts Couser critical critique cultural dialogue diary disability discourse Edited embodiment engage Essays ethical everyday example experience explore Feminism Feminist fiction film forms Fun Home gender genre graphical human rights identity ideological indigenous Australians individual John Eakin Journal kinds language Lejeune literary lives London memoir memory modes multiple narrator Native American norms novel particular past political postcolonial practices published rative readers reading relationship remembering Rigoberta Menchú Roland Barthes scholars self-narrating sexual shift slave narratives social Soft Weapons space story storytelling studies suggests tell term Theory tion tive Translated trauma truth University Press visual voice Wanda Koolmatrie witness women York