Life writing – which includes a wide spectrum of sub-genres such as (auto)biography, memoir, letter, diary, (digital) life stories, and oral histories – has a long tradition in the U.S. and is becoming more and more popular all over the world. An abundance of artifacts compiled by famous, semi-famous, and not-at-all-famous people fill public libraries, private bookshelves, research centers, social media, hard drives, and websites. And that’s actually not even surprising since writing and/or talking about ourselves is a deeply rooted cultural practice and comes very naturally to most human beings. We do it all the time: We tell a significant someone how our day was, we put together our résumé when applying for a new job, we talk about childhood memories with siblings or a close friend. However, talking and writing about ourselves in an academic context and, to boot, in a foreign language is a completely different story.
Tag Archives: Seminar
The Ups and Downs of Christmas: How Students Feel about the Season
Writing about Christmas is not an easy task. It seems it’s all been said before. And yet, students in our “Blogability” seminar have found diverse ways of approaching this unwieldy topic. Stay tuned – it all starts tomorrow.
Merry Christmas from the Blog Editors!