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The course will examine the autobiographical genre in Italian modern and contemporary literature by exploring the following questions: what does it mean to faithfully write one’s story? What is the role of memory in the process? How does writing transform the self? What is the connection between the life of the author and the story of the country they inhabit? Traditionally, the term autobiography has referred to a self-written biography that took the form of a confession or memoir. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the emergence of the autobiographical novel, the claim of authenticity was questioned because, in the novel, the life of the protagonist only partially coincided with that of the writer. Over the last decades, Italian writers have further explored the genre by turning to autofiction, a story that presents itself as a memoir or diary but instead is completely fictional. In this survey, students will read letters, memoirs, journals, autobiographical novels, and autofictions by authors such as Ippolito Nievo, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Sibilla Aleramo, Primo Levi, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Cesare Pavese, Melania Mazzucco, Walter Siti, Igiaba Scego, and Jonathan Bazzi. Each life story offers a diverse portrait of the Italian peninsula, thus providing a cross-section of the country’s modern history and culture. Throughout modules organized along lines of gender, race, class, space, and time, students will be prompted to reflect on how the relationship between reality and fiction changes from memoir to autofiction and investigate how this transformation of the genre affects the purpose of self-writing. While the class is taught in English, there will be sessions in Italian for students from the Italian major or minor.