Gender, Embodiment, and Life Writing

Recent decades have witnessed a flood of life writing about the body, much of it by women and much of it about experiences of illness and disability.  This development represents a significant change, as autobiography has historically been reserved for the most accomplished and able-bodied among us.  Our course will study the rise of what G’ Thomas Couser calls “the some body memoir,” asking how it revises traditional autobiography as it attempts to carve out literary space for voices and bodies that have not historically been represented in public.  We will consider how these new memoirs talk back to doctors and other health care professionals who medicalize the disabled body, as well as social environments that stigmatize and exclude the ill and disabled.  We will also ask how race and gender inform stories of illness and disability, as well as investigating differences between physical and mental illness and/or disability.   Each week we will read one memoir, paired with other writings meant to prompt discuss and critical examination.  In addition to more traditional academic writing, students will also have opportunities to experiment with their own life writing.