LIT 499-05 Women’s Autobiographies
Professor: Tarter
Meetings: Tuesday/Friday 9:30am-10:50am
What was it like to be a woman living hundreds of years ago? This course is an examination of women’s autobiographical literature from many different cultures and time periods. Drawing from a wide spectrum of primary sources, we will study such representative works as 17th-century Indian captivity narratives, 18th-century cross-dressed Revolutionary War memoirs, 19th-century slave narratives, Victorian maidservants’ journals, pioneer diaries of “the westward journey,” and 20th-century “fictional autobiographies.” In addition to primary texts, we will study literary criticism and apply many theoretical perspectives to the ever-expanding corpus of women’s literature and life-writing across the ages.