POPULAR ARTICLES
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
"The Christening Gown' is an autoethnographic exploration of the significance of a family heirloom for an Irish Catholic family in the USA."
The Karen Disorder: Breaking Free from the Chains of Institutional Labels emerges from my research in the field of illness and identity.
"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"
In this new issue from The AutoEthnographer, we highlight work from authors and artists in the USA, Finland, Bangladesh/Canada, Chile/USA, and India.
"We began this autoethnographic essay thinking about the love the teachers have for their students."
"I wrote Asha’s story to give voice to all the women in rural Bangladesh who cannot speak out against their abusers or society."
"I have continued to explore the usefulness of various poetic forms as a mechanism for providing access to suppressed internal voices."
"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."
Missing A Beat examines the journey of two brothers as they attempt to leave behind a past marred by domestic violence but are presented with a choice that threatens the sibling bonds that have been their life raft.
"Throughout the first week of January, 2022, the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry (IAANI.org) will hold their International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative (ISAN) as an online conference."
I’ll take you back through my journey and then reveal how I overcame my mental health challenges and reconnected with my true self.
"When I return to Sam’s place with the cheesecloth, I smell our “soup” pot. Shit. I envision the blotter headline: ECU Professor busted for marijuana. What a way to make my graduate mentors proud and to show success at this professor business."
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
What is autoethnography? The AutoEthnographer's international team of editors offer definitions & suggested readings.
“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
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC POETRY
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
Madison, Wisconsin is full of surprises, sometimes entertaining, always enlightening. But I didn’t plan for an abortion protest during a family weekend.
Catholic Boy Fights the Devil in the Mohawk River Valley is a short story that’s set in upstate New York during World War II. At a time when America was fighting fascist devils abroad, many were struggling with the devil’s influence at home.
The process of seeking pregnancy alone (by necessity, not choice) showed me how limited reproductive rights in the U.S. truly are—even before the recent loss of Roe vs. Wade, that policy that had so shaped my generation’s belief in our bodily autonomy.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC MULTIMEDIA
"While living in Ecuador, I wrote “Home” which essentially is an homage to the “third-culture kid” phenomenon, when your parents are from another country than the one you grew up in."
”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'm not exactly sure when I decided to make a performance piece about my sister's traumatic brain injury and death. In fact, I'm not sure there ever was a single moment of decision. Her story had become public in many ways, from online care sites to prayer chains to social media posts from family and friends. Her story was being performed out in the world before I started telling it."
Poet Anne McCrary Sullivan discusses her latest book Learning Calabar, Notes from a Poet’s Year in Nigeria with editor Michelle Reale.
Ulla-Maija Matikainen·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysAutoethnographic PoetryEducationFrom the EditorsMoreVolume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
··4 min read 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.
Lina Fe Simoy·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysAutoethnographic PoetryFrom the EditorsMoreVolume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
··5 min readThere are multiple approaches to find one's poetic voice depending on the lens one chooses as a part of the author’s creative process.
What is autoethnography? The AutoEthnographer's international team of editors offer definitions & suggested readings.
"Although I never planned it, I wrote a series of novels, Celestial Bodies, that have pierced my heart in a way nothing else ever has, changing me as a writer and as a person."
Through our collaborative autoethnography, we learned that intentionally spending time with grief is well worth the effort.
“Cold Snap” is about two disparate adults, caught in the tumult of abrupt weather change, caused by the accidental detonation of an experimental meteorological weapon.
The process of seeking pregnancy alone (by necessity, not choice) showed me how limited reproductive rights in the U.S. truly are—even before the recent loss of Roe vs. Wade, that policy that had so shaped my generation’s belief in our bodily autonomy.
"Give Me a Strawberry Cockroach" is the first article in our 2023 special issue on laughter and tells a story of Japanese language learning and performance.
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
In The AutoEthnographer’s latest podcast, Marlen Harrison talks with Sandra Faulkner about collage and visual poetry.
"Marlen Harrison and Edward Perrin enjoyed an opportunity to volunteer with Miami-based Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) to create family necessity kits for those affected by Hurricane Ian."
"Congratulations to Shanita Mitchell, Editorial Board member of The AutoEthnographer and multimedia artist, for her recognition by the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry (IAANI)."
SPECIAL ISSUES
Visitation, an Autoethnodrama in One Act
In this autoethnographic play, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband.
EDUCATION, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS, & REVIEWS
REFLECTIONS ON METHOD
