THE WRITING SELF: EXPERIMENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In this course we look at different forms of contemporary memoir: memoir as a
method of moving between representations of the self, autobiography that moves
away from confessionalism and into bio-text, documents that take as their subject the
complications of the body and the negotiations with history, public and personal.
We look at examples from the medium of photography, contemporary art, film and
performance to further investigate the ways that we hold, process and capture
memory—We also look at models of memory in which memory has failed, culturally.
How do we recover memory? How do we generate memory within a community?
What are the documents in popular media and that have a claim on the objects of
representation of memory?
In our own writing, we try to write an “I” that is both a conversation with assigned
texts and a method to dissolve the assumptions about the making of a self on paper.
Mediums:
/memoir /criticism /journal /sculpture /photography/performance/
Attendance & Course Participation
Attendance is mandatory and will be monitored. You are expected to arrive on
time, having read the assigned pages having brought the necessary material and
be prepared to participate in the class discussion.
Course Requirements & Grading
%30 Regular attendance & class participation
%35 Midterm project
%35 Final Project
Week 1
Introduction to the course. Student introductions
In-class writing: Responding to 12 questions by Bhanu Kapil
Week 2
Read up to pp.50 from Diamond Grill
Discussion of chapters/panels picked by students
In class screening: Fred Wah reading
Discussion: Composition of the prose poem.
How to do we go about reading this text?
Week 3
Read up to pp. 90 from Diamond Grill
In class reading: 37-42 from Diction Air by jam ismail (on the blog)
Discussion: Found Language/Collection of Speech/Making of a lexicography
(later notion of alphabet in Bhanu kapil)
Discussion: The idea of ghosts phantom limbs (the notion of half ghosts in
Diamond Grill)
Sharing individual lexicographies
In class listening: Maryanne Amacher sound piece/interview
Thinking about narrative in terms of non-continous forms, evolving over “time”
M.A accumulating.
Week 4
Read up to pp.150 from Diamond Grill
Read Poetics and Hybridity “Half-Bred Poetics “ (at Hisar copy)
Read pp.136-147 Corners from The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard (at Hisar
Copy)
Bring an image/upload an image of an interior space on the blog beforehand.
Prepare to discuss why you chose the particular space within the context of the
two readings. You don't have to necessarily choose a room you could also choose
a corner, the window sill, a balcony, all these also constitute space and it might
be easier to focus on a smaller space.
Week 5
Ending Diamond Grill
The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard pages TBA
Writing Assignment: I would like everyone to choose a specific place inside their
living quarters to focus writing on. It helps if you spend sometime being in this
spot whether it's in your room or house, to sit in there and see what it is, where
it is. Where does your body starts touching the space? What is its place in or to
the rest of the house/room/apartment?
Introduction to Chantal Ackerman A Brussels Story
Peer Feedback of work
Week 6
Trip planned to Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Memory
Or Guest Speaker
Burcu Borhan
Week 7
Assignment: Listen to CD1 from A Brussels Story
Read pages TBA from Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father
Louise Bourgeois.
Discussion: The three dimensional object of memory, the objects of personal
memory-memoir in fiction
Sculpture/installation Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo on blog
Week 8
Listen to CD2 from A Family in Brussels
In class screening: Sound-walk by Janet Cardiff
Peer feedback of writing/mapping projects.
Introduction to Humanimal
Week 9
Read Humanimal up to pp20, interview with Bhanu Kapil-posted on blog I'd like
you to think about documentary forms, archival work, found text, historical
narratives in the context of fiction. How do these genres sit with each other?
What are your thoughts on how documentary strategies function in film,
contemporary art or literature? Bring in an example of a documentary strategy
you find relevant to the reading we have been doing.
Week 10
Read Humanimal up to pp31
In Class screening: Trinh t minh ha, Reassemblage
Week 11
Trip planned to the St Joseph Highschool Historical Plant Collection
Discussing methods of Cataloguing, Archiving and Taxonomy
Week 12
Finishing off Humanimal
Bring collected documents/archive material for the final project
In class peer feedback of collected responses to 12 questions
Week 13
Individual meetings for final projects, to be arranged with instructor
Week 14
Individual meetings for final projects, to be arranged with instructor