Office Hours, January to April, 2019: Mondays 2:00-3:30
Discussion Groups, F 12:00-12:50
L20 -- Rhonda Shanks
Office: Brock Hall Annex, room 2360
L21 -- Janey Dodd
Office: Brock Hall Annex, room 1255
L22 -- Scott Inniss
Office: Brock Hall Annex, room 1256
L23 -- Ken Ip
Office: Brock Hall Annex, room 1256
Course Description
In our heavily mediated world, senses of self and of place are becoming increasingly uncertain. In this course, we will examine the basic concepts behind and writing practices of literary non-fiction, focusing in particular on autobiography as a writing form. How do we try to write ourselves into place? How do we identify and document ourselves through writing? What are the demands of placing ourselves in particular discourses and locations? We will deal with ideas of the human subject and of the depiction of and address to others (and the creation of various kinds of community), with the complex relationships between art and fact, and with the interconnections of the graphic and spoken or written language. Questions of representation and self-fashioning will form a crucial part of our investigation of how non-fiction becomes literary work.
Required Texts
David Chariandy, I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter (McClelland & Stewart, 2018).
Kathleen Jamie, Findings: Essays on the Natural and Unnatural World (Graywolf, 2005).
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf, 2014).
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon, 2003 -- originally published in French 2000-2001).
In-class essay 1: 20%
Click here to download the first in-class essay, to be written in your discussion group on Friday, February 1.
In-class essay 2: 20%
Click here for the topic sheet for the second in-class essay, to be written in your discussion group on Friday, March 1.
Take home essay: 25%
Click here for the topic sheet for the take-home essay.
Attendance and Class Participation (including small writing assignments, quizzes, etc., in the discussion groups): 10%
Final Examination: 25%
Click here for the outline for the final exam.
Lecture Schedule Lectures are Mondays and Wednesdays starting at 12:00 in SWNG 121.
Please note that I cannot affirm the accuracy or viability of the external material linked to this webpage; these links are provided solely as supplemental information for our class discussions.
Click here for a set of links to sample essays, found around the internet, for undergraduate literary analyses.
Please read David Chariandy, I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter.
Click here for David Chariandy's author's webpage for Penguin Random House Canada.
Click here for David Chariandy's academic homepage at Simon Fraser University.
Click here for "David Chariandy writes to his daughter, in wary hope" by Brian Bethune, from Macleans magazine, May 29, 2018.
Click here for "DAVID CHARIANDY: 'BLACK CANADIANS DO NOT COME FROM SPACE.' ON DRAKE, AUSTIN CLARKE, AND AN UNSUNG OUTPOST OF THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA" by David Chariandy, July 27, 2018.
Audio capture of today's lecture:
Wednesday January 16
Please read David Chariandy, I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter.
Friday January 18
Discussion Group: David Chariandy, Placing and Displacement
Monday January 21
Please read David Chariandy, I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter.
Audio capture of today's lecture:
Wednesday January 23
Please read David Chariandy, I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter.
Click here for a conversation between Claudia Rankin and Laurent Berlant.
Click here for "The Meaning of Serena Williams" by Claudia Rankine.
Click here for a wikipedia entry on the shooting of Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012. (Note the date on page 88 of Citizen.)
Audio capture of today's lecture:
Please watch this video, Situation 5 by Claudia Rankine and John Lucas. (The script is on pages 88 to 90 of Citizen. The video can also be screened on YouTube, here.)
Audio captures from previous classes on Rankine's Citizen:
Click here for "Claudia Rankine: How Can I Say This So We Can Stay in This Car Together?" from On Being with Krista Tippett, 10 January 2019.
Audio capture of today's lecture:
Friday March 8
Discussion Group: Rankine
Monday March 11
Please read Claudia Rankine, Citizen.
Wednesday March 13
Please read Claudia Rankine, Citizen.
Friday March 15
Discussion Group: Rankine
Monday March 18
Please read "Darkness and Light," "Peregrines, Ospreys, Cranes," and "Findings" from Kathleen Jamie, Findings.
Click here for an episode of "The Echo Chamber" from BBC Radio 4, in which Paul Farley interviews Kathleen Jamie. It was broadcast on Sunday, January 3, 2016, and the stream will stay live until the first week of February.