Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Second Edition

Overview

Reading Autobiography is an essential guide for students and scholars reading and interpreting autobiographical texts and methods across the humanities, social sciences, and visual and performing arts. Thoroughly updated, the second edition is the most complete assessment of life narrative in its myriad forms. It lays out a sophisticated, theoretical approach to life narrative in its myriad forms. It lays out a sophisticated, theoretical approach to life writing and the components of autobiographical acts, including memory, experience, identity, embodiment, space, and agency. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson explore these components, review the history of life writing and the foundations of autobiographical subjectivity, and provide a tool kit for working with this genre. Their survey of innovative forms of life writing, such as autographics and installation self-portraiture, charts recent shifts in autobiographical practice. Especially useful for courses are the appendixes: a glossary covering dozens of distinct genres of life writing, proposals for group and classroom projects, and an extensive bibliography.

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