The Rise of Autoliterature (NeMLA 2024 panel)
This panel will analyze autofiction and autotheory as contemporary literary genres still on the rise, with particular interest in putting the two in conversation with each other.
Autofiction and autotheory continue to grow in popularity as forms of contemporary life writing. Despite their differences, these two genres share a concern in representations of selfhood and subjective experience that explicitly engage and are shaped by other literary and philosophical texts. Moreover, by emphasizing the intertextuality of lived experience, they both challenge (1) the perceived conventionality of more established life writing genres, such as memoir, and (2) everyday assumptions of unmediated, individual self-expression.