Autobiography

Literally “self-life-writing,” autobiography offers insight into autobiographical memory but also sheds light on other aspects of memory: the inflection of personal representations of the past along lines of gender and culture; debates about the accuracy of memory and the truthfulness of self-representations; the dialogic relationship between individual and collective memory; and a wide range of memory phenomena such as narrative identity construction, trauma, embodiment, and nostalgia. How one makes meaning out of the material offered up by one’s life has much to reveal about both individual and collective memory.