Six Pretty Good Biographers

HUMS 022
Prof. Ernest Mitchell
Through an intensive study of transatlantic biographers this course will examine examine six roles biographers can play: the archivalist, the contemporary, the fictionalizer, the listener, the miniaturist, and the systematizer. Our readings range widely over cultures, places, and times: from Senegalese griots to the Lives of Mary Shelley; from Gertrude Stein’s “autobiographies” to the microbiographies of Jorge Luis Borges; from fragments by Walter Benjamin to Daphne Brooks’ liner notes on Beyoncé.