Life Story (Q3328)

15 credits, Level 5

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll examine how writers have experimented with autobiography and biography to:

• use your own experiences to understand the world
• piece together the life stories of others from the written, visual, oral and material traces they leave behind
• tell the tales of those who do not have archives devoted to their lives
• understand how reliable memory is
• understand how much can we know about other people and ourselves
• tell the story of a collective rather than an individual
• tell non-human life stories and why might we do so.

You’ll go on to create your own experiments. You’ll choose who to focus on and grapple with the political, ethical and aesthetic challenges of telling a life story.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 117 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2026/27. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Courses

This module is offered on the following courses:

• American Studies and English (with a study abroad year) BA
• Creative Writing BA
• English BA
• English and Creative Writing BA
• English and History BA
• English and Media Studies BA
• Philosophy and English BA