Queer lives demand queer forms of life writing; forms that account for the diverse byways often taken by an existence eschewing the telos of heteronormativity and its institutionalised path through life. In this seminar, we will look at the many stylistic, narratological, and medial means by which queer texts have questioned, parodied, and revised the time-honoured genre conventions of the autobiography. In terms of style, Quentin Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant shows us how camp notions of shamelessness, theatricality and dandyism serve as coping strategies in a time that is if not downright hostile, then at least inimical to the nurture of gender-fluid self-expressions. Christopher Isherwood's Christopher and His Kind challenges traditional genre expectations that call for a coherent self-narrative by splitting up identity into a number of different selves in what has, at the time, been considered the first 'out' autobiography – not least because its transatlantic scope, like no other, exposes the longstanding history of queerness in exile. Finally, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home brings the genre conventions of the autobiography face to face with a 'new' medium. Contrasting text and image, this graphic memoir opens up new layers of representing time, space, and identity in a text that serves both as a lesbian coming-of-age story and as a tribute to the queer sense of belonging between herself and her late father. As such, Fun Home also acknowledges the various queer subtexts that lie, closeted, beneath the heteronormative narratives that inform traditional autobiographies.

Please read and prepare:
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006. Print.
Crisp, Quentin. The Naked Civil Servant. 1968. New York and London: HarperCollins, 2007. Print. [or any other edition]
Isherwood, Christopher. Christopher and His Kind. 1976. London: Vintage, 2012. Print.