Black feminist theorist, writer, and teacher bell hooks states: “We are born and have our being in a place of memory. We chart our lives by everything we remember from the mundane moment to the majestic. We know ourselves through the art and act of remembering.” As foreshadowed by scholars of public digital rhetorics such as Ward and Warnick, in the contemporary media landscape of fake news and alternative facts, no act of remembering is spared a conspiracy-inspired interpretation. In this course we will examine the role of writing memoir as an “art and act of remembering,” one that serves not only to further the healing of (inherited) trauma but also as a rhetorical act of resistance in what is too often a fact-free media landscape. Students will write critical responses to published memoirs and secondary scholarship as well as their own autobiographical essays.
Required Texts
Art Spiegelman. Maus I and Maus II.
Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman. Never Again and Again.
bell hooks. Bone Black: Memories of a Girlhood.
Carmen Maria Machado. In the Dream House.
1 memoir of student’s own choice
Additional secondary readings distributed via pdf
Assignments
Four in-class writing responses, one oral presentation, and two autobiographical essays.