Early American Autobiography as History

Early American history is rich with stories of self, though most of these stories' tellers would not have called themselves "autobiographers." In this undergraduate seminar, we will read all kinds of personal narratives: political memoirs, courtroom confessions, salesmen's yarns, racy songs, and religious revelations. We will immerse ourselves in the narrators' perspectives, discovering how they experienced the world, what they thought was important to tell their readers, and who they thought they really were. We will read historical scholarship in order to place these personal narratives in broader context, but we will not assume that historians know all the answers. Instead, as we read, we will pay close attention to the ways in which personal narratives continue to defy historical interpretation.