autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
"Armored Corps: The spirit of combativeness and human resilience" is the theme of a graphic narrative project.
Syrian Identity and Academic Self: Emerging Research or Ruthless Methodology seeks to illuminate a personal reflection that sparked a unique line of inquiry, ultimately leading to an innovative exploration within my research project.
I channel Kincaid’s ironic and critical tone, while atoning for my failures to recognize dominant racist and classist discourses.
This piece, Hot Pink Truth Serum of My Trauma, is an autoethnography that speaks to the cultures and communities of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and violence.
This piece is a creative reflection which emerged out of the auto-ethnographic reflections from my PhD around research extraction.
Can a colorless person have any sense of what it feels like to be prejudged against, before “the you - inside yourself” opens your eyes in the morning?
I’ll take you back through my journey and then reveal how I overcame my mental health challenges and reconnected with my true self.
In my work , the issues of depression, anxiety, and bulimia nervosa are discussed heavily.
Madison, Wisconsin is full of surprises, sometimes entertaining, always enlightening. But I didn’t plan for an abortion protest during a family weekend.
I write out of the consciousness that I am both a product of the violence of war and a migratory being—not only in the strictest sense of physical displacement, but also in belonging.
You’re Still Here: Art and Grief in Autoethnographic Textiles Artist’s Memo You’re...
As I discuss my first queer event, a book discussion about a queer young adult book, Canto Contigo, I will explore my anxieties about my sexual identity, and the repercussions of this community warfare.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2024: PATRICIA LEAVY & SOCIAL FICTION
An Invitation to Story: "Everything in my life has shown me that stories matter. Sharing stories matters. Through stories we generate connection, resonance, empathy, reflection, discovery, learning, change, resistance, visibility. Storytelling is at the heart of my work. It’s also at the heart of autoethnography. I hope when you read my books and the contributions in this special issue that you’re inspired to think about how you might tell the stories of your research and your life." Dr. Patricia Leavy
LATEST POSTS
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
“The AutoEthnographer is an award-winning, non-profit, open-access, peer-reviewed literary and arts magazine dedicated to presenting the creative side of autoethnography, a qualitative research method uniting ethnography and autobiography that utilizes lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena." ISSN: 2833-1400
What is autoethnography? The AutoEthnographer's international team of editors offer definitions & suggested readings.
Readers can ask questions about autoethnography or invite an editor to speak to their group or classroom.
MISSION
THE AUTOETHNOGRAPHER is a digital magazine dedicated to creating a public, open-source space for creatives to share their personal stories of cultural experience. We aim to support emerging authors and artists, to promote cultural diversity and appreciation, and to celebrate creative expression as a vehicle for shared understanding and positive change.
MISSION
THE AUTOETHNOGRAPHER is a digital magazine dedicated to creating a public, open-source space for creatives to share their personal stories of cultural experience. We aim to support emerging authors and artists, to promote cultural diversity and appreciation, and to celebrate creative expression as a vehicle for shared understanding and positive change.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2024: PATRICIA LEAVY & SOCIAL FICTION
An Invitation to Story: "Everything in my life has shown me that stories matter. Sharing stories matters. Through stories we generate connection, resonance, empathy, reflection, discovery, learning, change, resistance, visibility. Storytelling is at the heart of my work. It’s also at the heart of autoethnography. I hope when you read my books and the contributions in this special issue that you’re inspired to think about how you might tell the stories of your research and your life." Dr. Patricia Leavy
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LITERARY NONFICTION
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LITERARY FICTION
Our future depends on readers like you.
$1 a month can help us reach our goals and continue to provide a platform for important voices and stories.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC POETRY
FEATURED POET: MILTON KARP
"My poems are not entirely mine. They belong to the people and events of my passage through life. For once the dam is breached its contents flow unabridged. - Milton Carp, poet at 91"
There’s also a larger goal underscoring my work. I aim to create a philosophy of the arts and a philosophy of love.
Laurel Richardson and U. Melissa Anyiwo writes the introduction to this special issue celebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy’s work.
Low-Fat Love Stories is the result of arts-based research on romantic, familial, and intrapsychic dissatisfying relationships, written by Patricia Leavy.
Overall, "Little Red" encompasses queerness, womanhood, and the implications of growing into an identity that isn't cherished by society.
"My Old Kentucky Homo," highlights my failure to assimilate into the community in which I still live, fourteen years later.
In this essay, the current reality of queerness is juxtaposed against milestones in my own life as a queer man in America.
This artwork is based on a startling and memorable encounter at the local vet while attempting to get Anaïs spayed.
This piece recounts a trip I took to the Czech Republic and it is proof that language barriers similarly embolden people to speak cruelly.
This is a love letter to my people, my family and a version of me trying to overcome the trauma of almost seeing their mother die.
"This autoethnographic poetry is born of my personal experience, witness, as well as currently chronicled and ancestral lore."
"I write at length about my experiences surviving rape and abuse as a Western woman in Japan. I was lucky to get out alive."
"This essay on bodily autonomy specifically discusses abortion access and rights in the United States and Canada, and the politics that often follow."
Our future depends on readers like you.
$1 a month can help us reach our goals and continue to provide a platform for important voices and stories.
"I tend to take every loss of rainforest personally. My autoethnographic poetry 'The Threat' and 'John Doe' are reflective of this."
"Throughout 2022, The AutoEthnographer invites rolling submissions in any of our categories (writing, poetry, multimedia, video, performance, etc.) around the theme of "Climate Change"."
"Here is a humble attempt for the 2022 special issue that comes in simple words to show how climate change begins at home."
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
Confessions of an ESL Student explores the significant role that English study played in my development as a student and adult.
This piece on hair describes how ideas of what is and is not fashionable, as depicted in popular media, can indelibly affect one’s self-perception and identity.
I provide context by referencing theory and practice in narrative medicine and current literary criticism around trauma plots.
HAVE YOU HEARD?
We're podcasting!
Listen to The AutoEthnographer in the car or on the go and enjoy discussions with artists, authors, performers, and researchers from around the world. In our 20-minute episodes we examine how autoethnography can be utilized in diverse contexts, from marketing and coaching to painting and songwriting.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC MULTIMEDIA
In The AutoEthnographer’s latest podcast, Marlen Harrison talks with Sandra Faulkner about collage and visual poetry.
How do creatives find joy in artistic performance as a form of black feminist autoethnography? Podcast & video.
"Award-winning artist, Suzanne Hughes, talks about autoethnography and painting. Suzanne is responsible for the cover art for our special issue based on climate change."
In today's new podcast & video Marlen Harrison talks with current marketing interns about the role of culture in using Google Ads.
”I share this artistic piece as an invitation to problematise and think further about not only the Autoethnographic “I/We” in what I/we can know about ourselves and our bodies but also to make space for the incoherence that becomes a part of “being” and “knowing” in explorations of fragmentation and loss.”
I pay homage to Nina Simone’s already iconic and thorough exploration of stereotypes by setting the project to the song “Four Women.”
IAANI AWARD WINNER
“A Seat at the Table” is the autoethnographic manifestation of my vulnerability, anger, and anguish, of my black feminist grit."
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
I worry about survival. Bluntly put, according to the Academy of Sciences almost every person on earth will be affected by climate change.
A tsunami of words, images, learned and pushed feelings and thoughts go through us every day. Poetry is a way to find our own voice.
"Damned," the first publication in The AutoEthnographer's Bodily Autonomy issue, is the product of my confused reflection and internal conversations with the culture that raised me."
FEATURED POET: MILTON KARP
"My poems are not entirely mine. They belong to the people and events of my passage through life. For once the dam is breached its contents flow unabridged. - Milton Carp, poet at 91"
How do creatives find joy in artistic performance as a form of black feminist autoethnography? Podcast & video.
"It is in finding these solutions, the tape and the glue that holds us all together, that we find the beauty of who we are as people."
I introduce artistic autoethnography and how the term a/r/tifact opens up the imagination to the possibilities of autoethnographic artmaking.
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
"In my interview with award-winning author Patricia Leavy on literary research, we also discuss her evolution from academic to novelist, her genre of "social fiction," and her latest novels series, Celestial Bodies."
This is a conversation with Patricia Leavy about writing fiction during the pandemic and her new novel, The Location Shoot.
"It is in finding these solutions, the tape and the glue that holds us all together, that we find the beauty of who we are as people."
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ESSAYS
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
HAVE YOU HEARD?
We're podcasting!
Listen to The AutoEthnographer in the car or on the go and enjoy discussions with artists, authors, performers, and researchers from around the world. In our 20-minute episodes we examine how autoethnography can be utilized in diverse contexts, from marketing and coaching to painting and songwriting.
REFLECTIONS ON METHOD
SPECIAL ISSUE 2024: PATRICIA LEAVY & SOCIAL FICTION
SPECIAL ISSUE 2023-24: QUEER
SPECIAL ISSUE 2023: LAUGHTER
SPECIAL ISSUE 2022-23: BODILY AUTONOMY
Visitation, an Autoethnodrama in One Act
In this autoethnographic play, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2022: CLIMATE CHANGE