THE DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN STUDIES is offering AMST 8920 Personal Narratives in Interdisciplinary Researchthis Fall 2019. This course is taught by Jennifer L. Pierce and will meet on Wednesdays from 1:25 PM to 3;20 PM. This course examines epistemological, theoretical, and methodological questions related to research analyzing personal narrative sources such as oral histories, in-depth interviews, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and letters. For more information, see below.
American Studies 8920 (Fall 2019) Personal Narratives in Interdisciplinary Research
Jennifer L. Pierce, Professor of American Studies
Wednesdays, 1:25 to 3:20 p.m.
Course Description: This course examines epistemological, theoretical, and methodological questions related to research analyzing personal narrative sources such as oral histories, in-depth interviews, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and letters. As narrative constructions about selves, these sources can provide unique insights into subjectivity, meaning, emotion, and desire that other kinds of social science and historical evidence cannot. The evidence presented in personal narratives is unabashedly subjective and its narrative logic presents a story of an individual subject changing and developing over time. Their analyses can provide important insights into the history of the self and its variations at the same time that they have the potential to enrich theories of human agency and social practices. Analyses of personal narratives can also illuminate historical, cultural, and social dimensions. In this light, personal narratives are never solely individual.
We begin by reading about epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues related to personal narrative analysis in work by literary scholars, historians, and social scientists. The next section focuses on a number of studies analyzing personal narratives drawing from different kinds of sources such as oral histories, memoir, letters, and diaries in fields such as American studies, feminist studies, ethnic studies, history, anthropology, and sociology. In the final section, we consider hybrid forms of personal narrative analysis, the difficulties researchers encounter when they find “ephemeral traces of subjectivity,” and the politics and ethics of conducting personal narrative research.
Some of the books may include: G. Thomas Couser, Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing; Mamie Garvin Fields with Karen Fields, Lemon Swamp and Other Stories: A Carolina Memoir; Saidiya Hartmann, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route; Martin F. Manalansen IV, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora; Sharon Luk, The Life of Paper: Letters and a Poetics of Living Beyond Captivity; Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of a Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom; Aren Aizura, Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment; and Arlie Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land.
