HMS-326P Translating the Self:Multilingual Memoir

3 Credits

How do we know ourselves, understand our experience, tell the story of who we are? The memoir is a genre that opens space for reflection on key elements in the construction of the self. Language itself plays a vital role in how we see our world, understand our experience, and come to terms with our identity. If language shapes the way we see and understand the world, what happens when we speak more than one language? In this course we will explore the memoirs of multilingual writers who traverse the boundaries between languages and investigate the internalized experience of multiplicity. We will examine the reflections of writers who have learned other languages and in the process, have developed new ways of perceiving, expressing, and knowing themselves. We will explore issues of displacement and alienation in addition to the converse: empowerment, play and creativity that may result from the experience of knowing the world through multiple languages.