Instructor: Benjamin D Lussier
How do we represent the self? This comparative course explores different visual modes for representing the self in autobiographical writing. We will look at how authors visually represent themselves in autobiographies that include photographs, graphic memoirs, and autobiographical films to investigate questions about self-creation, referentiality, and the tension between fact and fiction inherent in any autobiographical project. Throughout the course we will focus on the relationship between word and image,the trope of the photograph album and the attempt to understand the self in relation to the family, and the use of images to imagine or invent the past. Themes of memory, imagination, fantasy, nostalgia, trauma, and loss will demand our attention, and we will chart how these concerns transform across the different media. We will explore these themes across a range of materials, including: texts by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Roland Barthes, Gary Shteyngart, Alison Bechdel, Nina Bunjevac, and Art Spiegelman; films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Federico Fellini, Dominique Cabrera, and Jean-Luc Godard; and theoretical texts by Philippe Lejeune, Paul de Man,André Bazin,and Susan Sontag. No prerequisites required. All readings will be in English
