This course investigate the relationship between composing self/life accounts and contesting forms of discursive practices that "place" writers "inside" or "outside" seemingly unified, static, and discrete disciplines or gender, racial, sexual, socio-economic "communities."  To that end, we study diverse theories of representation, especially the problematics of representing difference. We examine self/life accounts from a variety of disciplines—English, sociology, history, psychology, journalism, or ethnography—that explore the relationship between such categories as fact versus fiction, creative performance versus scientific research, private life versus public accounts, or life experience/sociological data/psycho-analytical case study/historical evidence. At the same time, students engage in a multimedia writing project while experimenting with ways of composing self/life accounts which contest existing social and disciplinary divisions.