Memoir

• Introduces readers to the history, techniques, types, and forms of memoir and its many subgenres
• Penned in clear, accessible prose—Couser's cogent volume will appeal to general readers and undergraduates
• Offers a clear introduction to the growing field of life-writing more broadly
• Expands our understanding of memoir to include graphic memoirs (like Spiegelman's Maus) and documentary films like My Architect

Readership: General readers interested in memoir/biography; readers of publications like The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Nation, American Scholar, PMLA, American Quarterly, American Literature, Southwest Review, A/B: Auto/Biography Studies (US), Literary Imagination, Auto/Biography (UK), Biography (U of Hawai'i) Life Writing (Australia)

G. Thomas Couser, Professor of English, Hofstra University

G. Thomas Couser is Professor of English at Hofstra University. He is the author of American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode; Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography; Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing; Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing; and Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing.

"Couser has carved out a place on the reading list of any undergraduate life writing module as well as in any bibliography where the classification of genre is a concern ... the book thoughtfully introduces the theoretical foundations upon which the contemporary study of life writing rests; not least of these is the idea that selves are not recorded in life writing but constructed therein." - Claire Lynch, Modern Language Review

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. What Memoir Is, and What Memoir Isn't
2. Memoir and Genre
3. Memoir's Forms
4. Memoir's Ethics
5. Memoir's American Roots
6. Contemporary American Memoir
7. The Work of Memoir
Works Cited
Index