POPULAR ARTICLES
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
This essay is about my experience teaching yoga in a California prison.
"I tend to take every loss of rainforest personally. My autoethnographic poetry 'The Threat' and 'John Doe' are reflective of this."
"And these are the things I carry: the memories of those gone before us; the names of those entrusted to me to care for."
The poems in this collection are a reflection on my zero waste aspirations (and the values behind the movement at large).
In this new issue from The AutoEthnographer, we follow a ballerina through the desert, glimpse into the funeral industry, and process parental grief.
This is a piece I wrote in desperation after being confronted with the failures of the foster system in the United States today.
Daze Jefferies·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaAutoethnographic PoetryClimate Change Special Issue, 2022Special Issues
··3 min read"This autoethnographic poem resembles a wave: coming, going, history, hereafter...an endless exchange."
I use poetry to describe living with ME/CFS, an illness that is chronic and invisible, thus bringing awareness to this little known diagnosis.
"Horse, Therapy is a story of my own experience and is a commentary on trauma, both in animals and humans."
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.
Commercial genetics has become a cultural phenomenon. In this piece, I use autobiography to document discovering my biological father.
"We were constantly in fear of her hitting or pushing a friend, destroying a friend's toy, or throwing a block at someone’s head. We started to isolate ourselves because we were embarrassed of how our child acted around others."
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
"How universal homesickness is, even for those who didn’t come from the best homes; these salmon came from Concrete, Washington, and they still fight like hell to come back every single year."
"My research on tattoo meanings utilised autoethnographic accounts of practice to increase understanding of tattooing as practice & profession."
Laurel Richardson and U. Melissa Anyiwo·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024MoreReflections on MethodSpecial Issues
··14 min readLaurel Richardson and U. Melissa Anyiwo writes the introduction to this special issue celebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy’s work.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC MULTIMEDIA
This multimedia essay explores the notion of an “inner landscape,” as well as the creative practice and self-study from which this idea emerged
This is a song for the Passover prophet as a critique on his inability during the Covid-19 pandemic to appear and provide solace and safety.
"Combining autoethnography and artwork, Supreme Justice aims to reveal the persistence of institutionalized oppression of women through history."
Hard Water: An Autoethnography of American Rust is concerned with the spatial formations of capitalism and the psychology of class hegemony.
"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."
Through these reflections on heritage, I delve into being a child of parents who immigrated from the Bronx to a suburban lifestyle.
Laurel Richardson and U. Melissa Anyiwo·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024MoreReflections on MethodSpecial Issues
··14 min readLaurel Richardson and U. Melissa Anyiwo writes the introduction to this special issue celebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy’s work.
Through our collaborative autoethnography, we learned that intentionally spending time with grief is well worth the effort.
"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."
My essay tells my life story in relation to a specific moment in the history of American women’s access to abortion and reproductive justice.
Terry Graff·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaAutoethnographic EssaysClimate Change Special Issue, 2022Special Issues
··13 min read"In retrospect, it was inevitable that birds and machines would converge in my work as a life-long exploration and expression of the relationship between nature and technology through the creation of avian cyborgs, the genesis of which can be traced back to my early drawings of robots and of the bygone birds of my childhood."
"This poem is rumination on how the personal experience of volunteering in never-before-seen flood relief efforts in the remote north reinforces the research that 'many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years.'"
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
"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."
"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."
"I’ve already resisted that scholarship is not creative and poetry is not part of my scholarly self. I think the idea of autoethnography allows for that cultural divide between the creative and academic to be really disrupted."
SPECIAL ISSUES
EDUCATION, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS, & REVIEWS
REFLECTIONS ON METHOD
