Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader

by Diane P. Freedman (Editor), Olivia Frey (Editor)

Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines reveals the extraordinary breadth of the intellectual movement toward self-inclusive scholarship. Presenting exemplary works of criticism incorporating personal narratives, this volume brings together twenty-seven essays from scholars in literary studies and history, mathematics and medicine, philosophy, music, film, ethnic studies, law, education, anthropology, religion, and biology. Pioneers in the development of the hybrid genre of personal scholarship, the writers whose work is presented here challenge traditional modes of inquiry and ways of knowing. In assembling their work, editors Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey have provided a rich source of reasons for and models of autobiographical criticism. The editors’ introduction presents a condensed history of academic writing, chronicles the origins of autobiographical criticism, and emphasizes the role of feminism in championing the value of personal narrative to disciplinary discourse. The essays are all explicitly informed by the identities of their authors, among whom are a feminist scientist, a Jewish filmmaker living in Germany, a potential carrier of Huntington’s disease, and a doctor pregnant while in medical school. Whether describing how being a professor of ethnic literature necessarily entails being an activist, how music and cooking are related, or how a theology is shaped by cultural identity, the contributors illuminate the relationship between their scholarly pursuits and personal lives and, in the process, expand the boundaries of their disciplines. Kwame Anthony Appiah
Ruth Behar
Merrill Black
David Bleich
James Cone
Brenda Daly
Laura B. DeLind
Carlos L. Dews
Michael Dorris
Diane P. Freedman
Olivia Frey
Peter Hamlin
Laura Duhan Kaplan
Perri Klass
Muriel Lederman
Deborah Lefkowitz
Eunice Lipton
Robert D. Marcus
Donald Murray
Seymour Papert
Carla T. Peterson
David Richman
Sara Ruddick
Julie Tharp
Bonnie TuSmith
Alex Wexler
Naomi Weisstein
Patricia Williams

512 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've assigned selected essays from this book for my class on Monday. It's a great collection, and always stimulates great discussion.

[Anna Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Autobiographical Writings Across The Disciplines: A Reader, Ed. Freedman & Frey

As explained in the introduction, the editors of this book have the purpose of exploring “the autobiographical nature of knowledge” through a collection of essays across different disciplines (p. 8). They explain that in more recent years, academia is beginning to move from an entirely objective voice with which to write academic essays to a first-person voice in which the author shares not only the knowledge they’ve attained from research, but also their own personal story as it relates to that knowledge. For example, many authors included in this text tell of how they first became interested in their topic; Carlos L. Dews explains that his unique analysis of Hamlet and gender issues stems from his personal experience of being raised in an environment of manly East Texas cockfighters and a family full of women who had a feminine influence.

I read this book three times in the past four years, and I enjoy it every time. Rereading it, I’ve found that different aspects within the stories struck me. Both times I found the contributors insightful, and I enjoy the notion that serious writing can be told from an autobiographical perspective. If presented well, this allows the reader to understand the core dynamic of how we know something, and offers a sort of behind the scenes look, which can have the effect of giving it a more three-dimensional understanding.

The book is organized by field (i.e., film studies, science, etc.), and I chose the following selections to highlight in this review:
Finding the Right Word: Self-Inclusion and Self-Inscription, David Bleich
Gender Tragedies: East Texas Cockfighting and Hamlet, Carlos L. Dews
Three Readings of the Wife of Bath, Merrill Black
When the Body is Your Own: Feminist Film Criticism and the Horror Genre, Julie Tharp
My Father/My Censor: English Education, Politics, and Status, Brenda Daly
Adventures of a Woman in Science, Naomi Weisstein
A Textbook Pregnancy, Perri Klass.


Finding the Right Word: Self-Inclusion and Self-Inscription, David Bleich
I did not enjoy this essay. Its author writes about his aging mother and her drive to always find the right word in speech and how this influenced him as a writer. There just wasn’t much to it; it wasn’t very interesting. One page 42 Bleich quotes Andrea Dworkin, who, in Woman Hating, wrote, “Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid and never lying…” Bleich then follows with his mother’s beliefs that “reading put one in touch with the truth, regardless of what lies were told” (p. (43). This seems relevant to the argument of how honest nonfiction writers should be, but unfortunately Bleich never addresses this. It sounds like both Dworkin and the author’s mother would argue that autobiographical writers shouldn’t alter the exact experiences and sequence of events, but then again Bleich’s mother thought “regardless” of lies, so maybe this means that an author can switch the story around for the purpose of revealing with greater clarity the deeper truths, or central themes.


Gender Tragedies: East Texas Cockfighting and Hamlet, Carlos L. Dews
This is my favorite essay. I love the style, his analysis of Hamlet, and his deep insight on the effects of children raised in environments where gender roles are rigid and conflicting. Dews analyzes Hamlet as a gender struggle, and believes that Hamlet is torn between his own sensitive nature and his father's masculine insistence. "Hamlet's warring father, appearing dressed in armor, is the ideal male that Hamlet should aspire to be" (p. 72, Freedman & Frey). Dews analyzes Hamlet's speech just before the appearance of his father's ghost "as a reflection of his own potential flaw, his lack of manliness, his 'unmanly grief.'" Also, "Hamlet's and the cockfighters' fear of the feminine is a reaction against being reminded of their own femininity. They must react negatively toward the feminine, except in sexual attraction, in order to prevent the loosening of their grasp on their constructed masculinity" (p. 75). Dews write about his own personal experience growing up with a father who never showed “womanly” emotion and who required that he be all man, and in this way he relates to Hamlet. He writes that the women he was surrounded by growing up—his mother, grandmother, and sisters—saved him from the madness Hamlet endured, because he learned from them that it’s okay to cry, to express yourself, to be sensitive.


Three Readings of the Wife of Bath, Merrill Black
Although Dews essay Gender Tragedies is my favorite, this essay, as well as Julie Tharp’s, When the Body is Your Own, are a close second. Merrill Black analyzes Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath from his Canterbury Tales by examining The Wife’s viewpoints, her own take on The Wife at three different stages of her life when she did a close reading, and by weaving in her story of marital abuse. She also describes how others—young women fellow students in her classes and customers at bars she worked at—react to the stories, which offers a broader analysis on The Wife of Bath, while showing how Black’s own take on it is very unique, therefore sharing the point the editors made that knowledge is autobiographical: because Black was a sexually liberated woman in a school of traditional-minded girls and later a victim of marital abuse, she was able to relate to The Wife in ways others never had the opportunity to consider.
This was extraordinarily well-written.


When the Body is Your Own: Feminist Film Criticism and the Horror Genre, Julie Tharp
This is also a favorite essay of mine. Tharp has great insight into the dynamics behind horror films and she uses her own experience of a victim of violence to explain her perspective. She is sensitive to the female victims in slasher films, which is not a typical response, as the director, the fast-paced movement of the movies onto the next scene, the next victim, and the camera angles and acting is not meant to evoke the sympathy of viewers. It’s meant instead to be a combination of suspense and sudden thrills. Tharp references a study on female viewers of slasher films, which finds that women who have been personally exposed to violence felt considerably more sensitive and felt empathy for the female character victims (p. 286-287).
Tharp realizes that she places herself in the body of the victims while watching horror films: “a young woman in one of the Friday the 13th films relaxes on a porch swing when suddenly she sees a butcher knife slicing out of her torso. She and I have time to register our shock, to realize that someone is behind the swing, and that we are going to die before I can hastily disconnect from her” (p. 283).
Other insights:
“In many slasher films, the serial killer’s psychosis is traced back to patriarchy’s failure to properly gender him as masculine” (p. 284). This ties in with Dews essay, and certainly the result of a son who feels the need to prove he is a man from his father’s rejection of him as masculine could be becoming a serial killer; violence towards women is a rejection of the feminine, and violence itself is the only passionate male emotion permitted for “real men” (there’s pride too, but that’s not passionate).
This is a quote from Mary Anne Doane in her essay Film and Masquerade: “Above and beyond a simple adoption of the masculine position in relation to the cinematic sign, the female spectator is given two options: the masochism of over-identification or the narcissism entailed in becoming one’s own object of desire, in assuming the image in the most radical way” (p.286). This is insightful, though it assumes that the female viewer is relating to the female character. Tharp writes a fair amount about the masochism behind horror films, of the thrill of watching others suffer.


My Father/My Censor: English Education, Politics, and Status, Brenda Daly
I didn’t like this essay that much, but I did find the dynamic of self-suppression due to a parent’s abuse interesting and relevant to Carlos L. Dews’s writing in Gender Tragedies. Daly’s three sisters suffered childhood sexual abuse by their father, Daly herself witnessing and also having to keep the secret. She explains that this affected her ability to express herself as an adult, namely, in the form of her writing. I thought this was psychologically insightful. When you’re denied something as central as self-expression as a child, it effects your autonomy and identity. Her father controlled her voice. As an adult, she had to develop the courage recognize her own feelings—her own self—and she learned to do this in her writing. While reading Dews essay, I had a similar thought: was Dews’s piece Gender Tragedies therapeutic? Did writing it allow him to explore his feeling and to rebel against the suppression his father inflicted? I think it must have been therapeutic for him. And he certainly rebelled against his father’s ideals… a boy encouraged to be all manly-man ends up being a writer and a lit professor.
I guess this shows how little I liked Daly’s essay, as I’m talking more about Gender Tragedies. Daly’s essay wasn’t very well written, it seemed forced at times and included some material I thought off-topic and irreverent. She also bashes political conservatives at the end of it, loosely tying in her liberal views as a contrast to her father’s, but she stereotypes all conservative as being repressive to women, and this is simply incorrect. Daly could have used a bit more editing.


Adventures of a Woman in Science, Naomi Weisstein
I wasn’t very interested in this article, though it was fairly well written. Weisstein details her experiences as a female in the male world of science, an experimental psychologist from college to many years into professional employment. She describes discrimination and how she had to work harder then the men around her for less pay and less opportunity. On page 404 she tells of business meetings where a slide of the slide show is a naked or scantly clad woman, as a joke. She feels, and I agree, this is minimizing women as sexual objects, an attempt at intimidating her and her female colleagues: “You may think you are a scientist it is saying, but what you really are is an object for our pleasure and amusement” (p. 404). This led me to consider the dynamic of sex workers. I believe they are subjects, not objects. The majority of men who pay sex workers may be objectifying women, but the sex workers are engaging in a pretend-play assignment: act as if you are an object for money. They’re playing a role in the same way actors do. I particularly disliked the second half of Weisstein’s essay, where I think she attempted to warp reality to her perspective to support her feminism. Like Brenda Daly in My Father/My Censor, she just went too far.


A Textbook Pregnancy, Perri Klass
This was a good article and very well written. I think I can tell by reading it that Klass was organized and clear in her thinking and that she wrote outlines to be sure she communicated exactly what she wanted to, and, of course, lots of editing. There were no unnecessary details, no roaming tangents. Simply good writing.
This essay is a chapter of Klass’s book. In this excerpt, she writes about her experience as a pregnant woman in medical school. She’s twenty-six and married and in her last year of medical school when she, as planned, gets pregnant. She writes with a comedic sense, as being a med student learning about pregnancy through coursework it would seem that pregnancy is “a deeply dangerous medical condition” and “a state of disease,” also amusing is her situation of being the only pregnant woman she knows under thirty and in medical school period; she jokes at one point, “a lecturer mentioned the problem of teenage pregnancy, and I imagined that my classmates were turning to look at me (p. 449, 446). Klass is also insightful, noting the pull she felt towards opposite perspectives, one from school of a highly medical birthing process and the other from her birthing classes who believed that pregnancy is a healthy, normal process and that childbirth is typically non-problematic and certain medical procedures are unnecessary.