Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Second Edition

by Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson

Overview

With 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816669868
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	07/02/2010
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sidonie Smith is Martha Guernsey Colby Collegiate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.

Julia Watson is professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

1 Life Narrative: Definitions and Distinctions 1

2 Autobiographical Subjects 21

3 Autobiographical Acts 63

4 Life Narrative in Historical Perspective 103

5 In the Wake of the Memoir Boom 127

6 The Visual-Verbal-Virtual Contexts of Life Narrative 167

7 A History of Autobiography Criticism, Part I: Theorizing Autobiography 193

8 A History of Autobiography Criticism, Part II: Expanding Autobiography Studies 213

9 A Tool Kit: Twenty-four Strategies for Reading Life Narratives 235

Appendix A Sixty Genres of Life Narrative 253

Appendix B Group and Classroom Projects 287

Appendix C Journals and Internet Resources 295

Notes 297

Bibliography 307

Index 359