In this Book
- Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Second Edition
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
summary
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.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xiv
- 2. Auto biographical Subjects
- pp. 21-61
- 3. Auto biographical Acts
- pp. 63-102
- 4. Life Narrative in Historical Perspective
- pp. 103-125
- 5. In the Wake of the Memoir Boom
- pp. 127-165
- Appendix A. Sixty Genres of Life Narrative
- pp. 253-286
- Appendix B. Group and Classroom Projects
- pp. 287-293
- Appendix C. Journals and Internet Resources
- pp. 295-296
- Bibliography
- pp. 307-358
Additional Information
ISBN
9780816673452
Related ISBN(s)
9780816669868
MARC Record
OCLC
650307446
Pages
392
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No