Module ENGL3891: Life Write Now: Reading Contemporary Autofiction

Department: English Studies

ENGL3891: Life Write Now: Reading Contemporary Autofiction

Prerequisites

• ENGL1061 Introduction to the Novel

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To provide an overview and analysis of the literary mode of ‘autofiction’ as a particular strand within a lengthier history of life writing, focusing on post-2000 literature in a variety of forms (novel; poetry; group memoir; epistolary novel), and tracing its social, economic, and historical contexts.
• To introduce terminological debates and controversies regarding autofiction, fictional autobiography, and autobiographical fiction, and discuss the usefulness (or otherwise), commerical power, and sometimes pejorative implications of the ‘autofiction’ label.
• To connect autofiction and its formal experiments and literary techniques to the marginalised and non-normative identities of many of its authors/subjects, clarifying the radical potential of this mode of writing

Content

• Covers UK and US work, plus translated material (French; Norwegian) of particular influence in those nations, in order to track the growth of the autofiction mode and assess its contexts o Includes work by authors such as Ben Lerner, Bhanu Kapil, Annie Ernaux, Garth Greenwell, Brandon Taylor, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti, Patricia Lockwood, and Maggie Nelson
• Explores a variety of the topics raised by post-2000 autofiction, including: personal identity in relation to the nation; race, ethnicity, and belonging; heredity and family relationships; motherhood; sex, desire, consent, and shame; gender and sexuality; narrating traumatic experience; death and mourning; representing the mundane and the everyday; class and cultural capital; the self-portrait; selfhood and ‘selfie’ culture in an internet age
• Traces the value of the term autofiction – its commercial power (and prize winning capacities), its ability to ignite debate, and its usefulness as a way of understanding an apparently disparate set of texts

Learning Outcomes

• Understanding of the history of the literary mode ‘autofiction,’ including its place within a longer trajectory of life writing
• Familiarity with controversies and debates surrounding the autofiction term, including its pejorative use, its commercial value, and the ways in which its deployment may be affected by the identity characteristics of the author/subject of an autofictional text
• Engagement with the variety of autofictional practice in contemporary writing, particularly in UK, US, and (translated) French and Norwegian contexts
• Capacity to evaluate the usefulness or otherwise of secondary sources addressing autofiction, including the academic or theoretical, and the literary critical in its personal essay, book review, and journalistic manifestations
• Ability to assess the connection between autofictional experiment and marginalised and non-normative identities, including factors of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and sexual expression
• Ability to rehearse then set aside terminological debates (and attendant ideas of literary ‘truth’), in order to analyse formal experimentation, literary power, and the positioning or interpolation of the reader

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the essay may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University