Although autobiographies regularly figure on bestseller lists, how often do we ask ourselves the question, why do we like to examine other people’s lives? When Socrates said, “The unexamined Life is not worth living” what did he mean?
This course is designed to examine the many critical issues that arise when we approach the genre of autobiography. The seminar examines the varying ways in which men and women in different societies and times remember, recollect, and represent their lives in narrative form.
The seminar will address the following questions: what is autobiography? To what extent can we read autobiography as history or ethnography? Why is the genre of “auto/bio/history” become so popular? How does the digital medium affect the writing of the self? How does the intersection of gender, ethnicity, race, and religious or political conviction with autobiography undermine traditional assumptions about the genre’s form and content? Are there specific inscribed patterns of male and female consciousness across cultures and times? How has the internet changed the way we write our lives?
This seminar investigates the relationship between the autobiographer and the act of life-writing from an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective, drawing on texts from diverse cultures and the analytical tools of literary criticism, psychology, philosophy, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, and religion.
We will read men’s and women’s autobiographies from a variety of traditions in North America, Europe, and Africa written over the last two thousand years in order to examine the intersection of autobiography with history. The seminar is designed to synthesize students’ knowledge from a variety of backgrounds, such as history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and religion.
To bring this learning into the community, students enrolled in HUMN 330 will meet, interview, and record the life stories of selected members of the Mother Mary Cabrini parish in Shamokin, PA. This project is undertaken as a joint venture by the Franciscan friars of the Shamokin friary and Bucknell University. The goal is to deliver a “digital oral history of the parish” in Shamokin. In so doing, the students will fulfill the learning goals of the class; namely,
- Meaningfully compare intellectual materials of different or opposing types: textual with material artifacts; narrative with non-narrative texts; artistic with analytical modes of thought. (6,8)
- Appreciate the benefits, problems, and intellectual challenge of comparative study across historical, cultural, or generic boundaries. (5,6)
- Demonstrate effective expository skills, both orally and in writing. (7,8)