Biography, History, and Modernity

Catalog description

Drawing on a combination of primary and secondary sources, this course explores the multiple forms and evolution of biographical writing from the Renaissance onward. We will interrogate the relationship between biographical reasoning and several modern phenomena, including the construction of national identities, the rise of psychoanalysis, and even the historical profession itself. And we will consider whose voices, experiences, and subjectivities are historically valorized through the increasing prominence of biography, and who has been marginalized, silenced, or erased from history in the process. (HIST-HTR)