Memoir and Anti-Memoir: Experiments in Text and Image (CADT-UH 1027)

How does one attempt to write or portray the self? If we associate that practice with traditional memoir and self-portraiture forms, what happens when subjectivity is fundamentally unstable or under attack? Is the genre also simultaneously deconstructed? How is subjectivity literally made and remade through the exploration of new forms? In this course we will look at text and image projects across cultures, eras, locations, and across art forms that raise questions about the self and the collective, representation and memory, and about the remarkable as well as the everyday. Sometimes the doubt about attempts at portrayals is philosophical, but it may also be cultural-historical and context-dependent. To explore this question, and to develop skills in art, to experiment with the studio habits of artists, and to generate our own poetics of memoir/anti-memoir we will generate text and image experiments that both create and investigate an anti-memoir body of work.

Core: Arts, Design and Technology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 16 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2024)


CADT-UH 1027-000 (5220)
01/22/2024 – 05/10/2024 Tue,Thu
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)
at Abu Dhabi
Instructed by Magi, Jill