Title: Literary Nonfiction

PRQ:

Patricia Hampl has written that writers of literary nonfiction “attempt to find not only a self but a world,” and Michel de Montaigne has written that  “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.”  This course will both assume and challenge those arguments, as we discuss representative readings from autobiography and memoir to the personal and lyric essay.  Attention paid to literary qualities fostered in personal writing, and to form, theory, and historical and cultural contexts.

Regular class attendance; attentive and thoughtful reading; twice-weekly formal reading responses; three in-class examinations

Stop-Time, Frank Conroy; A Match To The Heaty, Gretel Ehrlich; Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Richard Rodriguez; Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn; The Scent of God, Beryl Singleton Bissell; Fun Home, Alison Bechdel; The Kiss, Kathryn Harrison; Lying, Lauren Slater.