Ernaux: Writing as a Knif

This course offers a deep dive into French contemporary novelist Annie Ernaux’s auto-sociobiographical fiction. It does so through close readings of some of her major works, organized thematically and across Ernaux’s oeuvre. Close readings of texts will be paired with recent film/theatre adaptations, sociological and theoretical work that has inspired Ernaux, her work’s growing critical reception (amplified by her Nobel prize last year), as well as other writers that have been inspired by hers. Themes covered include: writing impersonally in the first person; what is auto-socio-biography; exploring women’s desire and sexuality; Ernaux’s feminism and other kinds of militancy; ethnographies of contemporary France and the baby-boomer generation. Throughout, we will consider what kind of genre Ernaux’s writing is, and what writing as a knife can do.