Autobiography and American Culture

AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: RESTROSPECT AND PROSPECT, IN THE WISconsin Studies in American Autobiography Series, demonstrates the strength and diversity of autobiographical scholarship in the United States in the late twentieth century.' The collection of essays signifies not only the vigor of scholarly work but also the proliferation of autobiographical writing. Americans wrote over five thousand autobiographies between 1945 and 1980, according to Mary Louise Briscoe, whose recent work represents one of five basic bibliographies published in the last decade.2 Since the practice of autobiographical writing remains so pervasive in American culture, the genre and the scholarship that it generates provide a significant lens for viewing American studies. Because American Autobiography represents a range of scholarship in the field focused on the colonial period up to the present, it offers a meaningful framework for scholars interested in the current state of American autobiographical studies. Paul John Eakin, editor, describes the purpose of the volume: In order to facilitate the study of American autobiography, I want to draw together in a single volume a wealth of literary, cultural, and bibliographical information that

Art · Art history · Biography · Sociology · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · History

• A poetics of women's autobiography

  Sidonie Smith•A poetics of women's autobiography•1987

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• Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory

  M M J Fischer•Writing Culture•1986

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• The Race for Theory

  Barbara Christian•Cultural Critique•1987

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• The Slave’s Narrative

  C Todd Davis, Henry Louis Gates et al.•The Slave's narrative•1991

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