PWR 1VKA: Memoir, Autobiography, and Autofiction: the Rhetoric of Self-Representation

Whether “flashy and trashy” or “historically significant”, memoirs give readers front-row seats to incredible first-person stories. Memoirs provide both relatable and far-flung tales, inspiring, educating, and entertaining audiences across time and space. While some memoirs are deeply personal journeys of overcoming obstacles, like Tara Westover’s Educated, others recount the writer’s role in history unfolding, like Michelle Obama’s Becoming. Some authors grapple with the end of their lives, as Paul Kalanthi does in When Breath Becomes Air, while Haven Kimmel’s Girl Named Zippy explains her “boring” yet wildly funny girlhood in rural Indiana. Artists, celebrities, politicians, socialites, witnesses, sports icons and “regular” people turn to memoir to tell their truths.

Yet, in addition to offering insight into the human condition, memoirs also introduce knotty ethical questions you might explore in your research project, including:

• How writers portray others, especially those who may be hurt by disclosures
• How writers render others’ motives or explain others’ actions, including minors
• How a writer couches their own or others’ illegal or dangerous behavior 
• How much creativity is allowed in a work of creative nonfiction
• How writers contend with gaps in memory
• The moral and political frameworks evoked by the author
• The historical and social conditions which helped shape the author
• The problem of representing oneself as a member of a group or class of others
• The limits of an entirely first-person perspective on any claim to “truth”

Throughout the quarter, we’ll consider the role that memoir and its companion forms play in our understanding of what it is to be a human being in a social, historical world. We’ll consider together why people write about the most thrilling, devastating, and embarrassing events of their lives and what audiences gain by reading these accounts. Each student will select a case study that speaks to them and develop a research question of their own.  

Case Study Examples:

• Best-selling memoirs of historically important or culturally relevant personalities
• Graphic memoirs (Fun Home, Stitches, Maus)
• Ongoing newspaper columns (Tales of the City, Sex in the City)
• Autobiographical documentaries (Mind the Gap, Icarus)
• Autofictions of all genres (One Hundred Demons, A Million Little Pieces)
• Vloggers/ Bloggers who take their life events as material
• Artists’ self-portraits 

Major Assignments

Rhetorical Analysis

(1200-1500 words; 4-5 pages)  For this assignment, you will first select the memoir, autobiography, or autofiction that you plan to research for your quarter-long project. Then, you will find a persuasive commentary on or related to your chosen case study and analyze it, identifying the audience and assumptions guiding the argument. 

Texts in Conversation

(1800-2400 words; 6-8 pages) Your task for the TiC unit will be to build a collection of prominently published argument sources that present various interpretations or perspectives of your chosen case study. 

Research-Based Argument

(3000-3600 words; 10-12 pages) You will produce a well-supported, focused argument about your chosen case study, drawing on library and web-based research. Depending on your topic, you may also pursue original research in the form of an interview or meta-analysis.