Subject Present: Life-Writings and Strategies of Representation

Autobiographical writings provide unique windows for reflection on experience, knowledge, and social relations. Combining insights from American pragmatism, contemporary feminism, and poststructuralism, Subject Present explores how autobiographical writings weave patterns of identity from language, race, and gender. Dialogic literary strategies for representing the complexity of individual and collective experience are presented as models for rethinking the place of the subject of education in a multicultural society. Subject Present traces the historical context of the individual and illustrates how postmodern and feminist 'life-writings' create new ways of imagining identity.