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autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
"The words we use and how we say them are much more than sounds, they tell a story that gives us away, revealing a history about and behind us, a place and a people that we have come from."
"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."
Patricia Leavy·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024Special Issues
··30 min readIn Part One, I situated my work within the context of the work of writers. Now, I’m situating my work within the context of women writers.
"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"
"The AutoEthnographer is committed to diversity, equity, & inclusion in its administration; support of emerging authors and artists; & celebration of creative expression as a vehicle for shared understanding & positive change."
"Dr. Nadine Khair discusses why autoethnography is essential to successful businesses in this latest podcast."
"From dancing at New York’s Metropolitan Opera to the Cow Palace in San Francisco, every venue taught me valuable lessons."
In this new issue from The AutoEthnographer, we highlight work from authors and artists in the USA, Finland, Bangladesh/Canada, Chile/USA, and India.
"For the first time since my adolescence, I am recognizing that I don’t have to believe what everyone believes, nor do I have to base my morals on faceless strangers who don’t know who I am, or what my experiences are."
In this four-part series, I’ll take you back through my journey from the beginning. To explore how the conditioning of the Western environment I was born into served in disconnecting me from my own inner authenticity.
"Editor Guillermo Gil reviews Renata Harden Ferdinand's An Autoethnography of African American Motherhood: Things I Tell my Daughter."
This video explores how editors have developed their approach to reviewing creative autoethnography and highlights strategies for contributors.
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
Written by a white, cisgender, male yoga practitioner and newly qualified teacher from a working-class, Northern English background, this account seeks to elucidate upon how the issues noted may manifest.
I provide context by referencing theory and practice in narrative medicine and current literary criticism around trauma plots.
In this 2nd of my Processing Parental Grief series, Calliandra receives a letter from her mother weeks after her death.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC MULTIMEDIA
"Dr. Nadine Khair discusses why autoethnography is essential to successful businesses in this latest podcast."
The focus of this piece is to highlight and celebrate the asexual and aromantic community and what it means to exist outside of the expectation to be partnered.
In The AutoEthnographer’s latest podcast, Marlen Harrison talks with Sandra Faulkner about collage and visual poetry.
“Woken Word” was born as my inner voice was awakening and the world, ironically was becoming “woke” while simultaneously retreating into isolation.
"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."
“Tired,” the titular poem and the collection at large, is an autoethnography looking at the cause of so much pain, so much fatigue. Anthropomorphizing the feeling of being tired gave me creative license to dramatize and explore the real experiences of needing a break...
"In Turkey, we must consider opening folklore & the social sciences, but this time more powerfully, staggeringly, and creatively."
Shanita Mitchell and Marlen Harrison·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaMorePodcastsReflections on MethodVolume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
··18 min readToday we're talking with the award-winning author, researcher, and performer, Shanita Mitchell about performance and autoethnography.
"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."
Richard Stimac·
All ContentAutoethnodramaAutoethnographic Literary FictionBodily Autonomy Special Issue, 2022-23Special Issues
··23 min read"In this autoethnodrama, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband."
I wrote a study of my own faith, bankrupt as it may be, using story of my father, through the lens of Jewishness as I define it for myself.
This work is part of a larger ethnography of scars, one that addresses the intersection medicine, religion, and body politics in (among other places) Nebraska.
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
"The AutoEthnographer is excited to announce the 2022 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative (ISAN), a fully online conference. The conference will occur via Zoom on January 2-5, 2022."
"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."
How do creatives find joy in artistic performance as a form of black feminist autoethnography? Podcast & video.
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
