Columbia University professor Nicholas Dames, in an Atlantic article, describes autofiction as fiction with “voices that tease a reader into identifying the narrator with the author while casting doubt on that identification.” Autofiction has taken hold in Western fiction in the past few years, notably with authors both praised and reviled such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk. To its detractors, autofiction is navel-gazing and formless. To its admirers, autofiction makes stylish and contemporary interventions on the traditional novel form, blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction. In this course, we will explore the genre of autofiction, and its attendant controversies around form and content, as well as some of the discussion around the political, racial, and economic implications of whose work is categorized as “autofiction” and whose is categorized as “autobiographical fiction.”
Texts Under Consideration
I LOVE DICK, Chris Kraus (1997)
10:04, Ben Lerner (2014)
SO MANY OLYMPIC EXERTIONS, Anelise Chen (2017)
MOTHERHOOD, Sheila Heti (2018)
WHAT WE LOSE, Zinzi Clemmons (2018)
A PARTICULAR KIND OF BLACK MAN, Tope Folarin (2019)
DRIFTS, Kate Zambreno (2020)
ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING, Lisa Hsiao Chen (2022)
-Excerpts from THE STORY OF “ME”: CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN AUTOFICTION, Marjorie Worthington, U of Nebraska Press, 2018
-“The New Fiction of Solitude,” Nicholas Dames, THE ATLANTIC, April 2016
-Marjorie Worthington (2017) Fiction in the “Post-Truth” Era: The Ironic Effects of Autofiction, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 58:5, 471-483
-“Kate Zambreno’s Present Tense,” Alexandra Schwartz, THE NEW YORKER, August 5, 2020
-“Can a Black Novelist Write Autofiction?”, Tope Folarin, THE NEW REPUBLIC, October 27, 2020
Student Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate written and oral ability to place creative and/or scholarly work within broader artistic and/or critical conversations with peers, students, and established scholars/writers as well as in publication.
- Employ close reading skills to analyze a range of texts, engaging with ethical, cultural, esthetic, and political issues salient to the archive they construct.
- Demonstrate ability to apply advanced creative writing techniques.
Possible Assignments
Autofictional Creative Writing
Reading Reflections/Analyses
Multimedia Autofiction Piece