Killing Two Birds with one stone – teaching American modernism through life writing genres (and vice versa), Anita Jarczok
How is Memoir Rhetorical? Bethany Mannon
I Live as I Write: The Word and its Worth in a Literature Classroom, Disha Pokhriyal
Teaching women’s biographies in the times of pandemic COVID-19, Aneta Ostaszewska
Killing Two Birds With One Stone: teaching American modernism through life writing genres (and vice versa), Anita Jarczok
Abstract
The survey courses on a history of American literature usually (and usually inevitably) begin with life writing examples, but as we proceed further, autobiographical narratives tend to be neglected. In my short presentation, I would like to discuss the benefits of using life writing to teach American modernism. In the part of my survey course on American literature where I discuss modernism, I use fragments of Gertrude Stein’s “Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” Ernest Hemingway’s essay “Une Generation Perdue” and excerpts of Anais Nin’s Diary. I would like to present benefits of using these texts to teach modernism.
Bio
Anita Jarczok is the lecturer at the University of Bielsko-Biala and the author of “Writing an Icon: Celebrity Culture and the Invention of Anais Nin” (2017).
How is Memoir Rhetorical? Bethany Mannon
Abstract
This presentation advocates for teaching personal narrative in first-year academic writing courses. Composition studies has theorized personal writing as a part of expressivist pedagogy (Elbow), but I outline the ways it works as a rhetorical strategy. In particular, I contend that personal narrative is an ethical, effective way of reaching audiences and articulating arguments. This presentation will briefly review the rhetorical theory that grounds this argument. It will then offer examples of assignments and readings that foster ethical engagements with power structures and the lives of others.
Bio
Bethany Mannon is an Assistant Professor of English at Appalachian State University. Her teaching and research focus on rhetoric and composition, and her articles on life writing have appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College English, Contemporary Women’s Writing, and Currents in Teaching and Learning.
I Live as I Write: The Word and its Worth in a Literature Classroom, Disha Pokhriyal
Abstract
The presentation reflects on the intersections between my doctoral research on life-writing and my teaching experiences in an undergraduate English classroom in India. In the absence of a clear syllabus on life-writing, I often find the autobiographical element, while teaching most texts, as an accessible method to kindle students’ interest and engagement,. Being a young teacher and researcher, this is my opportunity to learn from fellow pedagogues, while I share my attempts at integrating learnings from Theatre-in-Education workshops and readings about narratives on/of the self, with the experiences of students as they read/mis-read texts and the self that explores them.
Bio
Disha Pokhriyal is pursuing her PhD (English) from Jamia Millia University (Delhi, India). She is exploring the dynamics of self-fashioning by some contemporary Indian women in their autobiographies. She teaches English Literature in the University of Delhi, India. Her areas of interest are Life-writing, Theories of Self and Visual Arts.
Teaching women’s biographies in the times of pandemic COVID-19, Aneta Ostaszewska
Abstract
The pandemic has changed not only the tools we use to teach and the ways we communicate with students, but also has impact on the pedagogy and the content of what we teach. In this presentation I would like to talk about the course on “Women’s Biographies” which I teach online at the University of Warsaw and my pedagogical strategy which is based on a reflection on biographical experience. Through reading and discussing women’s auto/biographies students learn about various ways of gender and self-representation. Ultimately, they involve in the process of speaking their own voices.
Bio
I am a postdoc interested in women’s studies and biographical research. I am the Director of the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Warsaw. My last book is devoted to bell hooks and the process of women’s empowerment.