ENG 385 - Life Writing/Narrative In Theory And Practice
Department: English
Description: Theoretical and practical consideration of interdisciplinary field of life writing/narrative. Textual production and reception, representation, rhetoric, memory, narrative, genre. Multiple enrollments allowed; maximum of 6 credit hours.
Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisites: ENG 246 or any 247 decimalization, or a minimum of 45 hours completed
Current Offerings
Spring 2026
- 001 - Lecture (In Person): T Th 9:35 AM - 10:50 AM , Amy Robillard 3.00 hour(s)
Dates: 01/12/2026 - 05/02/2026
Location: Adlai E. Stevenson Hall 136B (STV 136B)
Instructor: Amy Robillard
Class Notes: How do we use writing to make sense of our lives? How do we name ourselves as we tell the stories of our lives, and what do these stories do to us as we tell them? Who is allowed to tell their stories and whose stories become resources for our own? In this course, we will address questions such as these as we study contemporary theories of life writing and histories of autobiography, memoir, and the personal essay. We will consider these questions, along with the central question of the course—Why write a life?—from the perspectives of both readers and writers. We’ll read the lives of others at the same time that we workshop our own life writing. We’ll discuss the simplistic critiques of life writing as confessional, as narcissistic, as deceptive or fraudulent, and we’ll think through the cultural and emotional content of such critiques in order to articulate, a bit less hyperbolically, the purposes and functions of life writing in the early part of the twenty-first century.
Textbooks have not been finalized for section.