123041 PS PS Literary Studies (2022W)

People are eternally fascinated by other people's life stories, and the urge to record these “true” stories is often considered a basic human need. This course will explore the representation of historical and contemporary lives in a range of texts from different eras, including biography, autobiography, biographical fiction and drama, poetry and travel writing. Themes that will occupy us throughout include the aesthetics and politics of subject representation and the notion of biographical truth in different genres and media, the questions whose lives get told, for what purpose, and in what form.

AIMS:
Students will become familiar with a range of genres of life writing. They will be able to explain key concerns articulated in these works and contextualise them appropriately with reference to generic conventions and historical sources. They will further be able to apply various critical approaches to life writing – such as auto/biographical theory, cultural memory studies, gender and postcolonial theory – in presentations, discussions and in a scholarly term paper. By the end of term they will have acquired the skills for researching, planning, and composing an academic paper in literary studies.

METHODS:
Classroom discussion, presentations, research assignments, eLearning. Students are expected to present a paper of 8-10 minutes at a mini-conference (Sat 14 Jan 2023, 10am-4pm). Participation in the mini-conference is obligatory!