Reviewed by: Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader Gesa E. Kirsch (bio) Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader edited by Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003, 487 pp., $23.95 paper. Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines is an exciting, important, and well-edited collection of essays. The range of disciplines included—history, medicine, biology, music, math, law, film, anthropology, Africana Studies, as well as language, literature, and English education—is broad and alerts us to the fact that what the editors have documented in this book constitutes an important intellectual movement, perhaps best described as "engaged, autobiographical scholarship." The book is a pleasure to read; the selections are gracefully written and provide good models for how to incorporate autobiographical elements into scholarship, models that become especially important as writing in this new genre becomes more common. Writers in this volume do not shy away from tackling difficult and at times painful experiences—living with an adopted son who has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome; being the victim of sexual violence and incest; studying a subject (horror films) in which female bodies are endlessly assaulted, mutilated, maimed; being pregnant during medical school, that is, negotiating the divide between a private, joyful experience and a medical, potentially dangerous condition; and being involved in research on a potential carrier of Huntington's disease. The essays resulting from this blend of autobiographical reflection and academic inquiry are richer, more profound, and much more enjoyable to read than ordinary academic prose. [End Page 245] The book lends itself to selective reading, as each essay is unique in tone, style, and content. The first essay I chose to read is by Deborah Lefkowitz, an American Jewish filmmaker married to a German man who explores in her essay, and in her documentary film, Intervals of Silence: Being Jewish in Germany, what it is like to live in post-Nazi Germany, practice one's faith, and engage in serious conversations with Jewish and non-Jewish Germans about the past and present. This essay highlighted for me that the autobiographical is not simply personal but also shaped by history, religion, culture, country of birth, immigrant status, and many other factors. Exploring questions of identity further, we hear from Carla Peterson who takes us on a journey of her unusual childhood as an African American girl growing up in Switzerland. She takes the occasion of meeting James Baldwin to reflect on her own intellectual development—starting with her education in the French classics to her interest in African American women's writing and to her most recent project, an archival mapping of her family's impressive contributions to New York City's African American intellectual community. Throughout this journey, Peterson (and her readers) come to richer understanding of the intersections of race, gender, heritage, identity, and culture. Other fascinating selections in this volume include Peter Hamlin's delightful essay on composing music and cooking, two processes that showcase the art of improvisation; Bonnie TuSmith's powerful call for the importance of teaching ethnic literature because it can help students understand their heritage, identify with an intellectual tradition, and envision a different future; and David Bleich's reflection on his relationship with his mother who taught him how to "find and use the right word" (42) first in Yiddish, then in English, while simultaneously alerting him to the deception and disguise inherent in much of academic discourse. Autobiographical Writing contains 26 essays from fifteen different disciplines, a foreword by Ruth Behar (a leading scholar in both anthropology and the art of engaged autobiographical scholarship), and a helpful selected bibliography. Freedman and Frey did a fine job selecting essays, some especially written for this volume, some previously published in journals, and others excerpted from book-length classics like Williams' The Alchemy of Race and Rights; Appiah's In My Father's House; and Ruddick's Maternal Thinking. Of these sources, I found the original essays and reprinted articles more satisfying than the book excerpts because the editors' (helpful) explanations of internal textual references and framing arguments continued to draw my attention to the fact that I was missing aspects of the larger context. My other reservation...