Women and Autobiography: : Allison B. Kimmich: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Women and Autobiography

Description

Autobiography, as evidenced by best-seller lists, is one of the most popular literary genres. However, because critics have long dismissed it as subpar literature, little attention has been paid to autobiography, particularly accounts by women. Women and Autobiography, edited by Martine Watson Brownley and Allison B. Kimmich, offers an insightful perspective on this often overlooked field. This text gives a compact, comprehensive overview of women's autobiography, providing historical back-ground and contemporary criticism along with selections from a range of autobiographies by women. Developed primarily for undergraduates, Women and Autobiography combines theory and practice by pairing autobiographical selections and criticism. This book is a useful tool for courses in autobiography, literature by women, and women's studies.

Part 1 I Women's Lifewriting and the (Male) Autobiographical Tradition
Chapter 2 The Female Self Engendered: Autobiographical Writing and Theories of Selfhood
Chapter 3 Women's Autobiographical Writings: New Forms
Chapter 4 Construing Truth in Lying Mouths: Truthtelling in Women's Autobiography
Chapter 5 Feminine Authorship and Spiritual Authority in Victorian Women Writers' Autobiographies
Chapter 6 Gender-Related Difference in the Slave Narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass
Part 7 II Theorizing the Female Subject: Who Writes, How, and Why?
Chapter 8 Reading for the Doubled Discourse of American Women's Autobiography
Chapter 9 Woman as Other, Other as Author, Author as . . . Man? The Authobiographical Dimension of The Second Sex
Chapter 10 Beneath the Mask: Autobiographies of Japanese-American Women
Part 11 III Rethinking Genre: Autobiography in Other Forms
Chapter 12 Expanding the Boundaries of Criticism: The Diary as Female Autobiography
Chapter 13 Autopathography: Women, Illness, and Lifewriting
Part 14 Women's Autobiography from the Early Modern Period to the Present: Sample Texts
Chapter 15 Seventeenth Century: From A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life
Chapter 16 Eighteenth Century: From A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke
Chapter 17 Nineteenth Century: From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Chapter 18 Twentieth Century: From All o fa Piece: A Life with Multiple Sclerosis

Product details

Published	May 01 1999
Format	Paperback
Edition	1st
Extent	215
ISBN	9780842027021
Imprint	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Dimensions	9 x 6 inches
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Anthology Editor

Allison B. Kimmich

Anthology Editor

Martine Watson Brownley

This volume provides an invaluable introduction to the history of criticism on autobiography and gender, and an overview of the major critical debates in the field today. The editors have selected some of the most important articles on the autobiographical tradition, the theory of women's autobiography, the question of genre and sample texts from early and modern autobiography. Thsi volume will help to orient scholars who are either newly considering the field of lifewriting, or those teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on women's autobiography.

Martin Danahay, University of Texas-Arlington
Women and Autobiography is a superb classroom resource. The critical essays and excerpts from autobiographies are wide-ranging and authoritative, and yet accessible to the student. The editors' introductory comments are clear and pointed. This book is definitely on my course adoption list.

Nancy A. Walker, Vanderbilt University