Life Stories: How to Write Them, What They Mean

Catalog description

Note: IN-PRISON INSTRUCTION. Learning alongside incarcerated populations can be a life-changing experience, and this is one of your few opportunities at Duke to do so. Course will be held onsite at a prison in Butner, 30 minutes from Duke. Students must be at least 21 years old, have state-issued ID, be able to pass a criminal background check, and attend a required training at the federal prison. Course itself examines history, writing, and imagination. How do we understand and connect imaginatively to the life experiences of the people who lived history rather than those who made it? The emphasis will be on the lives of relatively unknown figures such as farmers, merchants and housewives.