Arts and Humanities Commons^™

How Do We Craft Autoethnography? A Modest Review, Niroj Dahal

The Qualitative Report

I am writing this review as an essential reading for readers and writers of the book—Crafting Autoethnography: Processes and Practices of Making Self and Culture, edited by Jackie Goode, Karen Lumsden, and Jan Bradford, which explores the art of crafting autoethnography (Goode et al., 2023). As a novice autoethnographer, I have grappled with challenges and explored borders while shaping my narrative as a self-narrator of autoethnographic writing. So, in this review, I have attempted to engage readers by offering the invitation, encouraging initial reading as entry to the book, subsequent re-entry, and eventual exit as my evaluation of the …

Poetic Representations Of Covid-19 Narratives: An Exploration Of Emotional Experiences During The Pandemic, Isha Harshe, Lindy Davidson

The Qualitative Report

In pivotal moments of history like the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical to attend to and preserve the stories of different people experiencing the same phenomenon in their own ways. This project analyzed the public’s emotional experiences during the pandemic using methods of narrative and poetic inquiry. After reading 105 entries from the Pandemic Journaling Project, an online platform where people anonymously published journal entries reflecting on their pandemic experiences, narratives were categorized based on ten prominent emotional themes: anger, anxiety, fatigue, fear, loneliness, longing, loss, loss of control, stress, and uncertainty. Found poems were constructed for each emotion …

Reflecting On Academic Freedom Through Fiction: A Theatrical Exploration Of The Blurry Contours Of The Freedom To Teach, Julie Paquin, Maude Choko

The Qualitative Report

This article aims at exploring the contribution that creative forms of research can make to the study of a little-known aspect of academic freedom in the Canadian context – academic freedom in curriculum development. It seeks to address the methodological challenge posed by research on academic freedom, that is, the fact that any academic writing on this topic necessarily draws initially, though not exclusively, from the researchers’ own experiences and perspectives. The article brings to life a fictional faculty meeting, during which questions about academic freedom in teaching are discussed. Although this meeting is the product of our imagination, its …

Marrying A Good Story And A Well-Formed Argument: The Metanarrative Of Zyx, Megan X. Schutte

The Qualitative Report

This article uses a metanarrative of a fictional, gender identity minority community college student (named Zyx) to elucidate and humanize the experiences that students in this population undergo throughout the course of their college career. Using a journal entry format, Zyx (they/them) is followed from the day before their first day at school through to their graduation. Their experience includes being first-generation and mixed race, living through COVID-19, coping with academic failure, and ultimately triumphing over adversity. The story is meant to cover some of the myriad obstacles to success faced by gender identity minorities attending community college while also …

A Father’S Death: The Therapeutic Power Of Autoethnography, Dwayne Custer

The Qualitative Report

Autoethnography is a transformative qualitative research method that has the power to heal self and society after traumatic events (personal and collective). It is a bridge between the subjective inner world of spirit and memory with the outer world of objectivity and culture. Autoethnography is a powerful tool for manifesting change in the world. In this paper, I will address autoethnography as a transformative methodology in relationship to my father’s death when I was a young child, demonstrate the therapeutic aspects of personal narrative, and quickly address some of the ethical challenges with the process.

The Chimera: Multiple Selves, Conflicting Desires, And Fluctuating Power Relations In Qualitative Research, Su Jung Um

The Qualitative Report

In this article, I (re)constructed and (re)presented a dialogic inquiry among my chimeric selves engaged in a study which I conducted from 2013 to 2017 to examine teaching experiences of graduates from a social justice-oriented preservice program. I interrogated the roles of my different, disparate, and discontinuous selves in the research process – as a former teacher, a former instructor of my research participants, a researcher with particular academic and political opinions, and as a foreigner working toward a doctoral degree from/in a U.S. higher education institution. In this article, I demonstrated how my chimeric selves with conflicting desires and …

"En Afrique, On N'Oublie Jamais": An Autoethnographic Exploration Of A Tck's Return "Home", Justin B. Hopkins

The Qualitative Report

Many Third Culture Kids (TCKs) struggle to answer the commonly-asked question: Where are you from? In this autoethnographic essay, a continuation of my earlier exploration of TCK experience (Hopkins, 2015), I confront my concept of home in reference to psychological research by Jerry Burger (2011), exploring the phenomenon of adults returning “home,” to place(s) that were important in their early lives. Like Burger’s subjects, I describe my experience of returning to visit, after over two decades away, the remote village in Senegal where I spent many of my childhood years. Following Tessa Muncey’s (2010) methodological lead, I structure my account …

Poetry Writing: A Process Of Finding One’S Own Voice, Marcelo S. Pagliarussi

The Qualitative Report

This article presents, in the form of a free-verse poem, the trajectory by which the author discovered how to unleash his voice as an academic writer. The poem describes how the author became completely disillusioned with the processes and products of mainstream academic journals in accounting and business, and how the discovery, by serendipity, of a chapter presenting writing as a method of inquiry, by Richardson and St. Pierre, invigorated his academic career. Then, inspired by a series of letters written by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the author presents a writing process that may be useful for other …

An Autoethnography Of Mothering In The Academy, Joanne Yoo

The Qualitative Report

Autoethnographies are an effective methodology for investigating mothering in the academy as they can allow researchers to explore their individual experiences of work/life balance struggles to shed light into wider social issues, such as academia’s accelerated time. This autoethnography includes five vignettes that describe the challenges of mothering in the academy. These vignettes depict some of the issues faced by mothers working on insecure academic contracts, the impact of accelerated academic time on mothering and the value of finding a supportive community of women to find new stories about motherhood in academia. Such windows into female academics struggles for work/life …

Creatively Exploring Self: Applying Organic Inquiry, A Transpersonal And Intuitive Methodology, Larisa J. Bardsley Phd

The Qualitative Report

This article explores the merit of using Organic Inquiry, a qualitative research approach that is most effectively applied to areas of psychological and spiritual growth. Organic Inquiry is a research approach where the psyche of the researcher becomes the instrument of the research, working in partnership with the experiences of participants and guided by liminal and spiritual influences. Organic Inquiry is presented as a unique methodology that can incorporate other non-traditional research methods, including intuitive, autoethnographic and creative techniques. The validity and application of Organic Inquiry, as well as its strengths and limitations are discussed in the light of the …

Particular Resonances: A Review Of Jonathan Wyatt’S Therapy, Stand-Up, And The Gesture Of Writing: Towards Creative-Relational Inquiry, David A. G. Clarke Phd

The Qualitative Report

I want to start with talking a little about resonances.

To resonate means to meet. To vibrate with something in some way. Jonathan’s book is full of resonances. It is crafted of them. Resonances between disciplines; therapy, stand-up, writing. Resonances between characters in these worlds. Resonances between knowing, ethics, and the real. Resonances between affective states of personing– which isn’t quite the same as being human. And resonances between the author and the reader; Jonathan’s stories touch us with their humour, their caring for the process of inquiry, and their openness. He confesses things that I’m sure we can …

Advocating For The Use Of Poetry And Mixed Media Work In Analytic Processes, Jason D. Dehart

The Qualitative Report

As part of my analytical process of looking at data collected from a pilot study on the use of film in the classroom, I discovered that I had the space to engage in a creative analysis process. In this article, I propose that creative methods be employed when analyzing data. An arts-based approach to research (Barone & Eisner, 1997) led to two creative products for my research: Poetry, which has been used with research in the past (Cahnmann, 2003; McCullis, 2013) and mixed media. This article explores relevant literature about integrating poetry and other arts into analysis and serves to …

Poetry Across The Curriculum: New Methods Of Writing Intensive Pedagogy For U.S. Community College And Undergraduate Education: A Book Review, Rama Cousik

The Qualitative Report

This book review presents the basic premise of the book, which is use of poetry to teach undergraduate courses. The author of the review shares her own experiences with using poetry to teach college courses and highlights the beginning chapters. The editors of the book, Frank Jacobs, Shannon Kincaid and Amy. E. Traver, and other authors share their experiences from a workshop on the use of poetry in college. Empirical and anecdotal examples do well to underscore the need for more arts-based education and particularly poetry in teaching college courses.

Writing With The ‘Other’: Combining Poetry And Participation To Study Leaders With Disabilities, Rama Cousik, Paresh Mishra, Mariesa K. Rang

The Qualitative Report

In this paper, we describe the process of transformative co-authorship between researchers and a participant with disabilities. The researchers were conducting a larger study that aimed to identify different factors that shaped individuals with disabilities to assume leadership roles. Drawing from interview data obtained from the participant, one researcher wrote a poem that provided a stage for the researchers and the participant to engage in reflexive process that transformed the researchers-participant relationship to that of co-authors. This paper describes this transformative process and what everyone learned from this enriching experience.

Constructing A Sociological Biography: A Surprisingly Complex Autobiographical Practice, Sara Louise Wheeler

The Qualitative Report

Biographical statements are an important part of impressions management in the academic milieu. These statements provide an online presence, accompany our academic products, and represent us in the academy. This becomes a high stakes activity, which can be quite anxiety provoking. As a qualitative sociologist with a particular interest in auto/ biography, producing such a statement really ought to be easy - putting into words: who I am, what I do, and where I am currently located. However, writing sociological biographies requires a fine balance, particularly during the early career phase, when we may be juggling projects, research directions and …

The Confessions Of A Goat: An Oral History On The Resistances Of An Indigenous Community, Prabhakar Jayaprakash

The Qualitative Report

Betta Kurumba is an indigenous (also known as Adivasi / tribal) community living in the Gudalur block of Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu, India. This district is part of the Western Ghats mountain range that runs parallel to the Western Coast of India. It is an anthropological research on a hamlet, Koodamoola, located inside a tea and coffee plantation, the Golden Cloud Estate (pseudonym). Few years ago, the owner (under legal contestation) of this plantation attempted to enforce a ban on rearing of livestock arbitrarily. Betta Kurumbas did not agree to this enforcement since they are the ancient inhabitants of this …

From Interview To Transcript To Story: Elucidating The Construction Of Journalistic Narrative As Qualitative Research, Jørgen Jeppesen

The Qualitative Report

There is a call to narrative investigators to be more explicit about their ways of working methodologically, in particular concerning dialogic/performative analysis. The purpose of this study was to examine how journalistic storytelling used as qualitative health research transformed, assembled and sequenced interview into transcripts, scenes, digressions, and other language products. A published story from a socio-narratological study of living with the terminal disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis was selected. Distribution and sequence of modes of transcription, versions of dialogue, transformation of observation and memory to scenes, and conversion of the researcher’s reflection to digression, were identified and calculated. Spots in …