Autobiofiction: gender, genre, and U.S. narratives of development, 1782-1983

Abstract

My dissertation explores the relationship between gender, genre, and the U.S. literary canon by combining literary and rhetorical methodologies to examine the ways that genre labels shape how writers and scholars create and define the legitimate speaking I of autobiography and Bildungsroman . My project is a wide-ranging critical examination of U.S. autobiographical writings from the late eighteenth century to the 1980s, and the study privileges alternative voices, e.g., African Americans, Chicanas, Chinese Americans, and lesbians. My research demonstrates how the study of gendered genres helps illuminate larger debates in the U.S. academy about scholars' efforts to recover texts written by members of marginalized groups. Genre theory allows me to combine rhetorical and literary studies and integrates my discussion of gender, genre, and canon. My use of genre theory also allows me to connect the critical debate about the canon with the larger public debate about what constitutes U.S. citizenship and success, a relationship that is especially significant in U.S. culture because regulative and constitutive literary narratives have been used to create dominant cultural narratives. The project's foundational text is J. Hector St. John de Cr¿vecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer (1782); my discussion of Letters demonstrates how genre labels and dominant cultural narratives shape writers' and scholars' creation of the legitimate speaking I , creating genre norms to which women must respond in their own autobiographical writings. Moving from the early Federal period to the late twentieth century, I explore how Caroline Kirkland, Harriet Wilson, Sui Sin Far, Zora Neale Hurston, Cherr¿e Moraga, and Audre Lorde interrogate, resist, and support generic and cultural narratives that privilege dominant cultural experience. I engage in a nuanced discussion of these women's subject positions as citizens and writers, examining how factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and geographic location affect their autobiographical writings and their discussion about the nature of U.S. literature and culture, as well as how readers and critics respond to these women's texts.