English and Film Studies Professor Julie Rak will be delivering her most recent research entitled "Boom! Manufacturing, Selling and Reading Contemporary Memoir" to the public for the Edmund Kemper Broadus Lectures on March 12, 13 and 15.
Since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of memoirs by celebrities and unknown people have been published, sold, and read by millions of American readers. The memoir boom, as the explosion of memoirs on the market has come to be called, has been welcomed, vilified, and dismissed in the popular press. But is there really a boom in memoir production in the United States? If so, what is causing it? These talks seek to answer these questions by examining memoir as an industrial product like other products, something that publishers and booksellers help to create. These texts then become part of mass culture, where they are connected to public events. From graphic memoirs to hoaxes, the memoir boom now has role in creating a culture of intimacy and an affective domain for citizenship.
Lecture #1
Tuesday, March 12
Time: 3:30 pm
Location: HC L-1
Lecture #2
Wednesday, March 13
Time: 3:30 pm
Location: HC L-1
Lecture #3
Friday, March 15
Time: 3:30 pm
Location: HC L-1