Abstract
In Spring 2023, I taught an undergraduate course in the English department focused on the memoirs of Israelis and Palestinians. More specifically, the course aimed to address two guiding concerns: what can we learn from writers from different groups who have lived in this region and the family stories they have decided to tell? What is the responsibility of the reader to these different histories? Course goals included using memoirs from this real and imagined homeland as a site for analyzing the persuasive power of memoir, taking into consideration its appeal to both affect and intellect. Additionally, the course raised questions about autobiographical writing and (inherited) trauma, the politics of memory, and the problematics associated with writing personal history. In this paper, I discuss my selection of memoirs, my secondary readings, my syllabus, and my teaching methods. I also discuss the relative merits of these decisions, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, I discuss what I would do differently given the events of October 7th and their aftermath and how I envision teaching the course in the future.
