Guidelines for PROPOSALS:
Proposals must be typed. Minimum length is one page. Proposals should briefly describe your project, provide a rationale or justification (what interests you about it; why you think it will be worthwhile), explain the approach you plan to take and (if appropriate) other resources you may draw upon, and note what problems, if any, you anticipate at this point.
Guidelines for SPECIAL PROJECTS:
Special projects may consist of an extensive revision and expansion of one of your papers for the course, or they may be an entirely separate project. Projects may focus on your own autobiographical experiments, as long as you also connect them to the works for the course. Projects may explore connections between works we read or may involve a more in-depth reading of a single author, perhaps drawing upon some of his or her work in other genres or upon biographies or critical studies of the author. Projects involving autobiographical films (for example, An Angel at My Table, based on Janet Frame's autobiography, or This Boy's Life, based on Tobias Wolf's) or involving a painter's or photographer's series of self-portraits (for example, Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman) are also possibilities. These are only suggestions; they are not meant to limit your imaginations.
You also might be interested in studying the internet as a medium for the "autobiographical impulse" by analyzing various online journals, a form hardly touched as yet in critical scholarship. I know nothing about these journals, but here's some information on them that I culled from a Lifewriting discussion list.
Over 2,000 people keep a daily record of their lives on the web. If you're interested, check out such sites as Diarist.net or Metajournals for writing about online journals (by online journalers themselves). For lists of online journals, the most comprehensive would be Open Pages . Many home-based web cams and sites provide large amounts of personal information in the form of real time camera views, daily journals, confessions, life stories, family snapshots, etc. Such uses of the web provide insight into the relationship between personal narratives, subjectivities, and their manifestations via specific media forms. The bulk of the personal web cam phenomena seems to contradict the notion of cyberspace as a place of fragmented, ever-shifting identities. Many sites that favor a more autobiographical approach tend to emphasize tropes of reality and well-defined identities. In other words, "visit my site and see the real, unedited and authentic me!"
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