82-296 From Augustine to Avatars: Personal Narratives Across Media

9–12 units, Carnegie Mellon University

This course investigates the evolution of personal narratives, from early Christian autobiography to chronicles of war and exploration to the emergence of the modern memoir, and concluding with a look at storytelling in other media blogs, vlogs, and social media. Who writes personal narratives, why, and for whom What formal and stylistic qualities unite such narratives and mark them off from other genres And how do these narratives change with the media used to render them These questions will give students a new lens through which to view crucial concerns of our time the relationship between public and private life the possibilities and perils of selfexpression and the ways ideological and socioeconomic forces shape the stories we tell about ourselves.

Prerequisites: none listed

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