The Secret Lives of Lives: Art, Autobiog

“Accuracy is fundamental to genealogical research. Without it, a family’s history would be fiction.” (Genealogy Standards)

With the emergence of autofiction, creative non-fiction, and the transformation of the memoir as a genre, along with the explosion of amateur online genealogy, social media, and before it, reality television and video game avatars, the concept of the individual in their minutiae has never been so evident. But even with all this self-portraiture, autobiography, documentation of daily life, surrogates, and general oversharing—are we any closer to really knowing the truth about ourselves or our species?

Using ourselves and our art as starting points, we will explore throughout this course other artists’ lives and how autobiography and genealogy play a role in art and fiction and vice versa.  During this “lives of lives” genealogical adventure, surprises, micro-histories, and secrets will be discovered and divulged with accuracy and abundance.

A variety of media and content will be covered including the work of Hilton Als, Gloria Anzaldúa, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Edmund de Waal, Percival Everett, Amy Fung, Henry Louis Gates, Saidiya Hartman, Todd Haynes, Siri Hustvedt, Derek Jarman, Fenton Johnson, Nella Larsen, Kiese Laymon, Li Young Lee, Audre Lorde, Édouard Louis, Helen MacDonald, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Gordon Parks, George Perec, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitt, Dorothea Tanning, Yoko Tawada, and Agnés Varda. Course guests and field trips will include professionals working in the fields of art, autobiography, fiction, and genealogy.