What is Autofiction?

Catalog description

As a disputed term, full of (rich with?) ambiguities, is it more about narrative’s responsibility toward veracity or the possible shortfalls of our expectations toward narrative forms and their relation to truth? What stories already inhabit and influence the words we use? What stories are difficult to contain and convey in those words? What of transcultural, translingual and exophonic modes? In the class, students will examine these and related questions through writing a series of creative pieces. This creative writing intensive will be held at NYU Buenos Aires, the University’s unique site in Latin America, a city where the Americas' legacies – from colonialism to democracies – intersect with a vibrant cosmopolitanism today in commerce and the arts. Through readings, films, site visits, and dialogues with writers/artists, students will connect directly to the local context and focus on Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a site of post- and de-coloniality, migration, and socio-political memory as intangible cultural patrimony. Writing a series of creative pieces, students will explore and expand their own voices (in inherited and acquired languages), plus reflect on how one or more cultures’ collective memory may inhabit their work, and how their choices in writing can shape the place where they find themselves today.