Serial Memoir

Serial Memoir chronicles the phenomenon of seriality in memoir, a transition in life writing toward repeated acts of self-representation in the later twentieth century. Such a shift demonstrates a new way to understand and represent constantly-shifting subjectivities and their ambivalent relationship to the concept and structure of the archive.

The rise of the serial memoir in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond is an important and timely topic, one that has not previously been addressed in any sustained way by scholars in the field. The first critic to deal with seriality at length and in depth, Stamant makes a substantial contribution to the field. - G. Thomas Couser, Hofstra University, USA

Autorentext

Nicole Stamant is Assistant Professor of English at Agnes Scott College, USA. Her articles on life writing and American literature have appeared or are forthcoming in ARIEL, MELUS, a/b: Auto/Biography, South Central Review, and The Hemingway Review.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Archiving American Lives in Serial Memoir 2. Serial Structures, The Archive, and Mary McCarthy's 'Perfect Execution of the Idea' 3. Alternate Archives: Maya Angelou's the Complete Autobiographies or the Seriality of a Life Mosaic 4. 'Too Meta to Live': The Materiality of Seriality From Art Spiegelman's 'Maus' to Meta Maus 5. Augusten Burroughs and Serial Culture 6. Conclusion: 'Veneration of the Trace': Archiving American Lives into the Twenty-First Century Notes Bibliography Index