"Know thyself," commands the Delphic Oracle, and perhaps in response, authors have felt compelled to confess, condemn, forget, and remember past selves in an effort to narrate and so envision who they are in the present. This course will look at a range of autobiographical works from The Confessions of Saint Augustine to contemporary graphic memoirs. We will ask how memory works to conserve, construct, or distance past selves; how bodies delimit selves; and how selves are conceived in and through our relations with others and with our worlds (material, social, and historical). |