A seminar in the reading and writing of literary nonfiction and in the development of a critical appreciation of its various forms. The course focuses on life writing in terms of its literary forms, as the authors’ responses to their culture, and as texts within which identity is shaped and altered by the intentional acts of their writers. Chosen texts demonstrate the art of life writing, as well as other paradigms for its interpretation and its literary and cultural influence. Such forms as (auto)biography, memoir, letters, diaries, travel and nature writing, and personal essays will provide the models for students’ exploration of this genre. Examples are drawn from writers such as C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, E.M. Forster, George Orwell, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, Flannery O’Connor, John Bunyan, Virginia Woolf, and others who form part of the literary canon of such writing.