Abstract
This course explores the genre of the biography/autobiography, one of the most popular and richly rewarding forms of writing. During the semester, we will consider the following questions: Why do we read biographies and autobiographies? What do these books hold for us? How can we enrich our own lives by reading the life stories of others?
To gain insights into the nature of personal narratives, we will be comparing two very different genres, cultures and times: the world of pre-Civil War America, where the African-American freed slave Frederick Douglass taught himself to read and write despite the efforts of his owners to keep him illiterate. He later used his literary brilliance to write The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which became a key document in the early effort of the Abolitionists to educate the American public about the horrors of slavery in the South.
In line with the course’s theme of identity and to inform our questioning about how we are shaped by our culture, we will read The Art of Leaving by Ayelet Tsabari, a Yemeni Jewish writer from Israel and we will elaborate on how ethnicity, religion, gender and culture figure in our journeys. This memoir recounts tales of her journeys, lost loves, travels, and her rebellion while serving in the Israeli army. Ultimately, we will try to answer these questions: why write (J. P. Sartre) and how do these two genres (biography and memoir) intersect? We will grapple with other questions while also pondering the weight of slavery and Jewish history, notions of wandering, displacement, and quest for identity.