Spiritual memoirs on the writer’s relationship to invisible worlds: spirit, religion, mysticism, the numinous, the divine. They may tell stories of conversion; of loss of faith; of inexplicable encounters with spiritual forces; of heightened experience (maybe heightened by drugs, fasting, meditation, other aids); of joining a community centered on a relationship to the divine.
In this course, we read spiritual memoirs for insight into the psychology, and sometimes, physiology, of spiritual change; to learn about religions; to see how spiritual life fits into culture; to understand how spiritual identity relates to, complements, or is in tension with other identities (racial, sexual, political, class, etc.); and to understand literary techniques that make a piece of writing effective or good.