Database searching programs are example of autobiography

In autobiographical case studies, the individual who is the subject of the study writes his or her own life's account. These accounts are in narrative form and include diaries and journals used to record the events of one's life and are generally written with consideration of a future readership.

Autobiography example

More recently, feminist autobiographical approaches have expanded the literary tradition of autobiography to include not just written but also spoken and visual genres such as interviews and family photographs. In expanding and revolutionizing what constitutes autobiography, social practices that are a part of our everyday life and mark the links between the personal and the political have been reconstituted as autobiography.

The canon of Western autobiography, Phil Cohen argues, has been historically male centered and has featured the life writings of both the elite and self-made men. An emancipatory vision and practice outside these confines advanced by feminist scholars, particularly over the past 30 years, has taken place alongside postcolonial criticism that has contributed, as Carolynn Steedman notes, to a shift away from a gaze focused solely on the European subject toward that of subaltern and marginalized subjects, such as the working class, women, and people across national and ethnic contexts.

Similarly, approaches to autobiography have undergone scrutiny and critique. They have moved from a single emphasis on written literary texts to a proliferation of alternative forms of self-narration that include written texts, oral narratives the spoken , fictional accounts, curricula vitae CVs , and the visual. Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury, and Penny Summerfield, the editors of the milestone book Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods , feature theoretical advances and research methods that include autobiographical case studies.

They identify the development of feminist autobiography in three areas: genre, intersubjectivity, and memory. Feminist critique of autobiography as a literary genre whose beginnings arise from the accounts of elite white males is scrutinized for its exclusionary practices. The notion of the autobiographer as a unified, transcendent white subject is questioned.