"Bestsellers: The Memoir" is a Course materials drawn from MIT Open Learning and catalogued under Literature & Language Arts for Undergraduate / College. From the source: What is a “life” when it’s written down? How does memory inform the present? Why are memoirs so popular? This course will address these questions and others, considering the relationship between biography, autobiography, and memoir… Slide Collection preserves the upstream link, the original creator credit and the licensing terms; download the file to use it in a classroom, study group or revision plan.
About this presentation
What is a “life” when it’s written down? How does memory inform the present? Why are memoirs so popular? This course will address these questions and others, considering the relationship between biography, autobiography, and memoir and between personal and social themes. We will closely examine some recent memoirs: Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Students will write two brief papers: a critical essay and an experiment in memoir. As a “Sampling,” this class offers 6 units, with a strong emphasis on close reading, group discussion, focused writing, and research and presentation skills.
How to study this deck
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Five questions to test your understanding
- What is the single most important claim on the first three slides, and what evidence is offered for it?
- Which slide could you remove without losing the argument? Which slide is load-bearing?
- Where does the deck switch from definitions to applications? Mark that transition.
- What would a student who already disagreed with the conclusion need to see to be convinced?
- Which two slides, if combined, would give the clearest one-slide summary of the whole deck?
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