Leading and Making Lives: One Man's Story

Nov 8, 2012
4:30 PM
Porter Hall #100

"Who do we say we are? And how do we know what we say? One key way: through self-narration and life writing. An expansive view of autobiography supports this claim. Autobiography is not only a literary text but much more: a daily identity practice, and even an expression of the rhythms of consciousness. Experience writing memoir discovers three primary motives for our endless self-narration: we are trained to do it as children; we use it to explore our deepest existential questions; and it just may confer an adaptive value for the organisms that we are."

John Eakin has been studying autobiographical narrative since the 1970s and is the Ruth N. Halls Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University.

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Last modified: Oct 24, 2012 12:00:00 AM EDT
Date created: Oct 17, 2012