Patricia Foster

What is the value of the memoir ? Is it nothing more than navel-gazing and narcissistic indulgence? Or is it a writer's attempt to confront her own consciousness, to make sense of her own place in the world? All memoirs require the recounting of a life. But a simple recounting will be superficial, cosmetic, if the memoir does not contain what Professor Foster calls the life lived "beneath the skin." This self-scrutiny, Foster believes, is what sustains and engages the memoir reader. Using several contemporary memoirs, including her own All the Lost Girls, Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments, Adam Hochschild's Half the Way Home, and Blake Morrison's And When Did You Last See Your Father?, Professor Foster will discuss the special place of memoirs in American culture.

Associate Professor in the Department of English