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SoSe 22: History as Memoir

Hannah Spahn

Kommentar

Last year, Juneteenth was established as a national holiday in the United States, commemorating June 19, 1865, the day that the end of slavery was proclaimed in Texas (more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and two months after the formal surrender of the Confederate army). Briefly before President Biden signed Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth was published, a memoir whose significance, as one critic had it, may “land between” The Education of Henry Adams and Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography (H.W. Brands). This seminar uses Gordon-Reed’s slim but powerful book as a window into the genre of the memoir. To explore the cultural borderlands between literature, politics, and history, we will put into conversation memoirists from different backgrounds and periods, from the eighteenth century to today. While we will also aim at getting an overview of general problems of autobiographical writing, our main focus will be on the representation of key problems of American history and politics through the personal lens of the memoir. Please purchase: Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth (New York: Liveright, 2021). Schließen

14 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Mi, 16:00 - 18:00 14 Termine

Mi, 20.04.2022 16:00 - 18:00

Dozenten:
Prof. Dr. Hannah Spahn