How do you tell the story of your life? What do you include and what do you leave out? How do you present yourself to the world, especially when you belong to a group that is consistenty misrepresented and when those misrepresentations have profound effects? In this course we'll examine the intersection of memoir and conflict from different perspectives, in different settings, from the late twentieth century to the present, including writers from the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Nigeria, and Iran. We'll look at the social, political, and cultural forces that gave rise to these works of lifewriting, emphasizing how the various writers shaped their lives in print and paying special attention to how these writers used lifewriting to tell stories that would not ordinarily make it into print with such force and immediacy. Writers include Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water, Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior, Art Spiegelman, Maus, Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Antijie Krog, Country of My Skull, Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me, Jessamyn Ward, Men We Reaped, and Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries.

In this online asynchronous course, there are four modules that pair two books, with linked background reading/viewing. In each of the first four modules we'll be using discussion boards to talk about the texts we're reading; there will be quizzes on the texts and supplemental reading; and then a paper at the end of each module. The final paper will reflect on the political and cultural importance of lifewriting.