Annotated Bib Re Iff

7/30/2019 Annotated Bib Re Iff

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Caroline Porter

English 801

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Memoir and Autobiography in Composition Classes

Barton, Greg. Making a Place: Autobiography in Composition Classrooms.Language Arts

Journal of Michigan. 16.1 (2000) 27-30

Barton begins by describing the challenges he faced during the Autobiography Unit in his

Composition class. Despite his goals to turn his students from spectators into participants, he

describes unengaged students who fail to take inspiration from readings and activities and

produce stale, dry, and vapid writings. Barton spends the rest of the article giving practicaladvise to potential teachers who wish to use autobiography in the classroom and detailing his and

the students success. He begins using in class writing exercises to prompt students to

examine the backwaters, their background, seemingly meaningless memories in a search for

something that will become meaningful. After focusing in on the less obvious memories, whichare notthe traditional subjects about which student autobiographies are written, the students are

left with the job of making this event meaningful or as Barton puts it discovering elements ofmeaning [by] investigating the raw material of [their] own [lives] and conveying that

meaning to the reader, thus making effective rhetorical choices. This meaning ispersonal, giving

the student both insight into their own life andensuring a level of engagement with their writingthat they might not have when writing an academic analysis paper.

Boegeman, Margaret Byrd. Lives and Literacy: Autobiography in Freshman Composition.

College English. 41.6. (1980) 662-669.

Boegemans piece is extremely useful because it breaks down the controversy over usingmemoir and autobiography in the classroom. It methodically introduces objections, and then itrefutes each one. She starts by examining the most common objection to it, that personal writing

is too informal. Too informal, for Boegeman, is code for too little effort. Formality she

suggests, denotes laziness. However, she emphasizes that this is not necessarily true.Autobiography can be careful and deliberate; it can be as formal as it needs to be. Next,

Boegeman tackles the first problem objection, which is the second most common objection.

She suggests, in response to this, that the use of the first person has pedagogical advantages.

Students, she says, are reluctant to think for themselves, and the use of the first person forcesthem to. Echoing another person is safer, Boegeman posits, but forcing the students to claim

their own opinions because it is important step in their intellectual independence. Finally, she

argues against the notion that narrative is not as rigorous a form of writing as academic writing.But narration is notsimple; there are many rhetorical devices at work: thematic unity,

Aristotelian wholeness, balance, proportion, and selectivity. She ends by suggesting that if we

teach autobiography rigorously, that the skills learned will transfer to writing for otherdisciplines.

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Brown, Megan. The Memoir as Provocation: A Case for Me Studies in Undergraduate

Classes. College Literature. 37.3 (2010) 120-142.

While acknowledging and responding to criticisms of memoir as both the cash-cow of

the moment and self-aggrandizing, inauthentic cries for attention, Brown offers insight into the

usefulness of memoir inauthenticity included in contemporary composition and collegeEnglish classes. Despite her own reservations about teaching a memoir based writing class,

referring to the class to her colleagues as Me Studies and Self-Help 101, Brown finds ways

to work these concerns into a course which encourages the questioning and critique of a culturefocused so intensely on the self. She argues that the memoir is in itself highly provocative; it

allows students to, as I mentioned earlier, problematize American cultures fixation on

individuality, but it also prompts students to think of the way these life stories are

commodified and consumed. This leads to discussions about the ways in which identities arecultural created and incite debates about ethical issues, ultimately honing students analytical

skills. Thus, students become critical of readings in the class as well as their own life writing;

they begin to consider the importance of and develop a narrative voice, a skill that will transfer to

the academic analysis paper.

Culhane, Alys. Memory, Memoir, and Memorabilia: A Generative ExercisePedagogy:Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 4.2

(2004). 310-312.

In this essay, Culhane imagines a course in which memoir would be tied to memory and

memorabilia, and offers a practical model for instructors who wish to teach memoir. Explicit in

the essay is Culhanes belief that memoir belongs in college writing classes; she argues first that

memoir is a valid form of scholarly discourse, and second that memorabilia can and should beused to trigger memories. Memories, she argues, are the most important part of the process.

Using objects to trigger memories, then, is an effective way of uncovering memories writing

material that one thought lost or irrelevant. Jewelry, shoes, and glasses: these things should beconsidered when writing memoir. The students must ask themselves how did this object come

into my possession and why is it important to me? Culhane stresses that the teacher must

encourage the blurring of boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. A series of free-writesshould be used to construct dialogue; characters should be altered. Workshops are essential to the

process, and a conference with the teacher required. The most compelling suggestion Culhane

makes, though, is that the teacher must take part in the process. He or she should write a memoir

piece along with the class and must share it, workshop it, and revise it along with the students.This creates a unified classroom and provides an example for the students.

Cutler, Ronald. The Autobiography as Creative Writing. College Composition andCommunication. 9.1 (1958). 38-41.

Cutler takes a different tack than the majority of authors who focus on memoir and its usein freshman composition; he focuses on the use of autobiography in relation, primarily, to its

effect on the studentspsychologicalwell-being. While Megan Brown disputes the use of

memoir as a kind of self-help, insisting on its academic benefits rather than its personal ones,

Cutler maintains that freshman, uprooted from their homes and in a brand new place, needthe

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release autobiography offers. However, Cutler does not stop with this argument. He also

proposes that autobiography is useful academically for college freshman. He admits that the

majority of freshman autobiographies are a recitation of names and dates, but he offers asolution, this prompt: How did I get to be the kind of person I think I am now? This prods

students to think critically about the self. It encourages reflection the self becomes, then, a

product of various influences. Rather than a static structure, pre-built and unchanging, thestudents begin to think of their personalities as a process. They are constructed, but then rebuilt

and changed; they shift according to what they meet. This kind of critical thinking, Cutler

stresses, is crucial to further study. And during students freshman year, when they are sovulnerable, the autobiography serves a dual purpose: to comfort and to hone critical thinking

skills.

Johnson, Rebecca Ruppert. Autobiography and Transformative Learning: Narrative in Search ofSelf.Journal of Transformative Education. 227.1 (2003) 227-244.

Johnson begins by describing what the average composition teacher looks for in student

essays: logical arguments with solid analysis and evidence. But what teachers get or at leastwhat Johnson received are personal essays, essays grounded in the students personal

experiences even if the assignment is a formal academic analysis paper. Johnson suggests thatteachers should work with this pattern rather than trying to change it. She then details her

experience using autobiography in her classes, arguing that its use in composition (and other

English classes) helps students to understand themselves and other classmates. It asks students totake risks, to expose their pasts to scrutiny. This, according to Johnson, both places other

students andthe teacher in the role of listener, thus making teacher and students equals, and

fosters students respect for each other. Johnson also notes that students feel more comfortable

sharing their autobiographical work when teachers also share; so she encourages teachers toshare details of their personal life to, in essence, level the playing field. On a more academic

note, Johnson posits that students who write autobiographically must examine their familiar

pasts critically, giving them a fresh perspective on something they thought they knew.

Root, Robert L. Variations on a Theme of Putting Nonfiction in Its Place.Pedagogy:

Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 4.2(2004). 289-295.

Most relevant in Roots piece is his examination of the place of non-fiction, which he

redefines as the written expression of, reflection on, and/or interpretation of observed,perceived, or recollected experience A genre of literature made of writing which includes

the personal essay, the memoir and poetic prose texts generated by students in college

composition class [italics added], in English Studies. He argues that non-fiction actuallybelongs in many subcategories, including literature, creative writing, and composition. Non-

fiction (a category in which memoir and autobiography belong) offers connection to the full

scope of the discipline. Root also offers more support for the inclusion of non-fiction, as hedefines it, in the composition curriculum. He draws on comments from his students, citing their

surprise with non-fictions ability to help them discover the meaning of their experiences. Root

summarizes this phenomenon in one pithy sentence: we write what we want to find out. So,

essentially, by writing what you know, you will find out what you do not know. Root also

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connects this process of discovery to revision. With each revision, the student has an epiphany.

Implicit in this argument is that students, when writing non-fiction, will learn the art of revision,

that non-fiction writing will introduce them to revision in a relatively painless way. Roots articlesupports the notion that the personal and the academic are and should be connected; they are not

in opposition.

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