Dr. Katrina Sark
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History Through Autobiographies

Taught in the Department of History, University of Victoria, 2017
Course by Dr. Kat Sark

“If we do not know our own history, we are doomed to live it as though it were our private fate.”
(Hannah Arendt)​
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Course Outline: 

(Subject to changes / in progress)

Week 1

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Introduction: history, cultural analysis and autobiography 
 

CASE STUDIES: 
Human Rights and Narrated Lives (Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith)
Autobiography vs. memoir (Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson)
Quest narratives (Carolyn G. Heilbrun)
Defining Autobiography Website

READINGS:
  • Margo V. Perkins, Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties, 2000, selections
  • Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, 2010, selections
  • ​Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (eds.), Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, 1998, selections
  • Jane Ribbens and Rosalind Edwards (eds.), Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Private Lives and Public Texts, 1998
  • Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life, 1988
  • Joy Dixon and Jeffrey W. Alexander, Nelson Guide to Writing in History,
    pp. 1-30
FILM: Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014) 
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Week 2 
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Narrating Indigenous Lives 

CASE STUDIES: 
TRC and residential schools
“Going Home Star” Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Red Dress Project
​

​READINGS:
  • Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School (2013)
  • Bev Sellars, Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival (2016)
  • Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman (1990)
FILM: Highway of Tears (dir. Matthew Smiley, 2015)
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Week 3
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Narrating Civil Rights

​CASE STUDIES:
Martin Luther King Jr. March on Washington
Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a dream" speech

​READINGS:
  • ​Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
  • ​James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro. Ed. by Raoul Peck (2017), selections
  • Conversations with James Baldwin (1989), selections
  • Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” in Sister Outsider (2007),​ pp.40-44
  • Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
  • Tracy Curtis, New Media in Black Women's Autobiography: Intrepid Embodiment and Narrative Innovation, 2015, selections
  • Johnnie M. Stover, Rhetoric and Resistance in Black Women's Autobiography, 2009, selections
FILM: I Am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)

FILM: Maya Angelou: And
Still I Rise (dir. Rita Coburn Whack, Bob Hercules, 2016)

VIDEO: Walking as a Revolutionary Act (TED Talk)

​
PODCAST: Still Processing, MLK Day

 Week 4
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Narrating Trans Lives

​CASE STUDIES:
Laverne Cox Talks about Intersectionality at Harvard 

READINGS:
  • Janet Mock, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More (2014)
  • ​Chaz Bono, and Billie Fitzpatrick. Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man (2011)
  • Bernice L. Hausman, “Body, Technology, and Gender in Transsexual Autobiographies,” The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, 2006.
  • Susan Kuklin, Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, 2014
  • N. O. Body, Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years (1907)
VIDEO: bell hooks and Laverne Cox in a Public Dialogue at The New School 
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Week 5 
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 Narrating Queer Lives

CASE STUDIES: 
NY Times, Larry Kramer and AIDS activism

​READINGS:
  • Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart (1985)
  • Georgia Johnston, The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography, 2007
  • Tyler Oakley, Binge (2015)


FILM: 8 (play by Dustin Lance Black, 2011) on YouTube
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Week 6 

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Narrating Feminist Lives

​
CASE STUDIES:
Diana Pearce - Feminization of Poverty Revisited, 2013 
Jasbir K. Puar 
Dorothy Smith, Institutional Ethnography
The Feminist eZine 
​

​READINGS:
  • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own / Three Guineas (1929)​
  • Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (1960)
  • ​Gloria Steinem, Nomad: My Life on the Road (2015)
  • Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within, A Book of Self-Esteem (1992)
  • Oprah Winfrey, What I Know for Sure (2014)
  • Tina Fey, Bossypants (2011)​
  • Amy Poehler, Yes Please (2014)
VIDEO: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi (TED Talk)
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Week 7 
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Narrating the Holocaust 

​CASE STUDIES:
Anne Frank

Yolocaust photo project by Israeli-born artist Shahak Shapira
​

​READINGS:
  • Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)
  • Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2001)

FILM: Labyrinth of Lies (dir. Giulio Ricciarelli, 2014)

FILM: The Denial (dir. Mick Jackson, 2016)

VIDEO: Deborah Lipstadt, TED Talk




Week 8
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Narrating Global Lives

CASE STUDIES:
Malala Yousafzai

South African TRC
Nelson Mandela
Trevor Noah
​
​READINGS:
  • Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013)

FILM: He Called Me Malala (dir. Davis Guggenheim, 2015)

FILM: ​Trevor Noah: You Laugh But It’s True (dir. David Paul Meyer, 2011)

VIDEO: Refugee Narratives (TED talk)

Week 9 
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Narrating New Masculinities

CASE STUDIES: 
Feminist men 

READINGS:
  • Marie Campbell, Ann Manicom (eds.), Knowledge, Experience, and Ruling Relations: Studies in the Social Organization of Knowledge, 1995.
  • Nancy K. Miller, Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts, 1991.
  • Philip Holden, Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State, 2008.  

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Week 10 

Conclusion

Project Presentations 






Bibliography:

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000 (1990).
Tess Coslett, Celia Lury, Penny Summerfield (eds.), Feminism & Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods, London: Routledge, 2000.
Tracy Curtis, New Media in Black Women's Autobiography: Intrepid Embodiment and Narrative Innovation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
John Dececco and Kevin Kumashiro, Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian / Pacific American Activists, London: Routledge, 2003.
Bernice L. Hausman, “Body, Technology, and Gender in Transsexual Autobiographies,” The Transgender Studies Reader, eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge. 2006.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008 (1988).
Philip Holden, Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.  
Georgia Johnston, The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Susan Kuklin, Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out. Candlewick Press, 2014.
Nancy K. Miller, Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts, London: Routledge, 1991.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press Books, 2003.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Third World Feminism: A Critical Reader. Blackwell, 1994.
Diana Pearce, “The Feminization of Poverty: Women, Work, and Welfare,” The Urban & Social Change Review Special Issue on Women and World. Volume 11, Numbers 1 and 2, 1978.
Margo V. Perkins, Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties. University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
Jane Ribbens and Rosalind Edwards (eds.), Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Private Lives and Public Texts. London: Sage, 1998.
Dorothy E. Smith, Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People, Altamira Press, 2005.
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (eds.), Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Second Edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Johnnie M. Stover, Rhetoric and Resistance in Black Women's Autobiography. University Press of Florida, 2009.
Martine Watson Brownley, Allison B. Kimmich (eds), Women and Autobiography. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999.​

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