Registration and preparation:

Applications should be delivered through the online registration system by 17 October 2022. The working language is English for application materials, lectures, and discussions. Small group participants may elect to discuss in other languages. (Participations must provide the following three documents when applying for the course. All three documents should be combined into a single PDF when submitting and with your name listed in the document)

1) A letter of motivation in English (1-2 pages). Please explain what motivates you to attend the course, what you want to learn, and how you anticipate the autoethnographic approaches covered in this course will help you in your research.

2) A biographical statement (max. 1 page). Please include information on the type of program you are in currently in, where you study, what types of methodologies you have used previously, and what stage you are in your current research. You may also include information on other experience and qualifications that are relevant for your approach to research, also from outside the university.

3) A proposal in form of an autoethnographic draft exploration in English, max. 7.200 characters, not including references. We realize that students are in different stages of their PhD projects and have different approaches to autoethnography. These autoethnographic explorations will be reviewed as a way to screen applications, match students in groups, and give feedback during the course. The proposal should give a concrete sense of how and why you (might) use autoethnography in your PhD project, and reflect on methodology in relation to your considerations about using autoethnography and/or actual experience with using autoethnography; and any dilemmas or challenges that you might face. Please note that these are not “papers”. We would like you to integrate a few examples of your empirical material or preliminary autoethnographic experiments. The sample of your empirical materials is up to you; these can be excerpts of observations or diary, arts-based responses such as sketches, photos, notes, interviews, research log book, video diary, poetry, memory work, videoperformance or other materials from field studies. As an example of the diverse approaches to autoethnography you can e.g. consult :https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/qixa/27/7 (Markham, Harris, and Luka, 2021)

Sign up here

Assoc. Professor Tatiana Chemi at AAU is teacher and contributes with broad experience in autoethnography and arts-based research. (Profile: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/124693

Details regarding other guest teachers, panels, field studies and course activities will be announced in September 2022.

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Course description:

The course explores autoethnography as a main or supplemental mindset and method. Students will gain insight into the ontological, epistemological, and ethical premises of autoethnography. Course themes include collaborative autoethnography; embodiment; autoethnography and intergenerational memory; autoethnography as a lens to engage with more-than-human entities; and decolonial potentialities. We unlock these themes by applying the prism of arts-based approaches.

Consequently, the course focuses on building the ability to conduct autoethnographic reflections through active text and audio-visual production. There will be group workshop time for experimentation with writing and arts-based approaches to autoethnography. Autoethnography covers well-known sociological and humanistic methods for critical-reflexive introspection on the researcher’s role and construction of relations with others. It offers rich narrative, visual and performative approaches for linking personal experience with the larger cultural phenomena being studied. It emphasizes the importance of both recognizing and including one’s own experiences and subjective understandings at all phases of the research project, including building ethnographic stories. Common to autoethnographic approaches is that the researcher reflects on their presence in the field and in the text by using a first-person narration.

Autoethnographic texts cut across multiple genres and media, e.g. from poetry, short stories, journalistic accounts, or visualizations (e.g. still photos, drawings), to performances, or videos.

Program:

Tuesday 29/11 - RUC

10.00-10.15 Landing/take-off and introductions, Practicalities of the course, Questions and curiosities, Intro to groups

11.30-12.30 Tatiana's concept/approach/prism (along the lines of making kin)

12.30-13.45 Lunch

13.45-14.45 Time in groups

15.00-17.00 Collaborative autoethnography: a panel and a discussion - Bodies collective - Cross pollination collective - earlier students

Wednesday 30/11 - RUC

09.00-10.00 Take-off by Lisbeth (a central concept/approach/prism/ moving bridge)

10.15-12.30 Work in groups

12.30-13.40 Lunch

14.15-16.30 Field study: Sisters Hope Home in Hedehusene

(depart from RUC at 13.45) Contact: Linda

Thursday 1/12 - CPH

09.00-10.00 Take-off by Linda - decolonial and relational ontologies- with focus on (urban) nature-cultures)

10.15-12.30 Kitt Johnson, Site-specific choreographies: relating to place, Contact: Linda

12.30-13.45 Lunch

13.45 - Explorations/site-specific work/performative engagements in groups Dinner in Copenhagen (Contact: Linda)

Friday 2/12 - RUC

09.00-15.30 Group presentations and feedback

12.00-13.15 Lunch

15.00-15.30 Short evaluation/transportation activity/ritual

0 DKK for PhD Students enrolled at Roskilde University and other Danish universities. 4.800 DKK for PhD students enrolled at foreign universities (including CBS).

PhD students outside Denmark can apply for course fee dispensation if they do not have funds.

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Course literature

Keynote and main lecturer: Tatiana Chemi Coordinators and lecturers: Linda Lapiņa (llapina@ruc.dk) and Lisbeth Frølunde (lisbethf@ruc.dk)

Note that only the texts with an * asterisk are primary and required readings. The primary texts will be available online on the course’s Teams page.

Gaining an overview

How autoethnographic do you want to be?

During the course, these readings provide a “mainstay” to ground the various approaches and mindsets. This selection provides introduction to the field so that you as PhD student can find your voice among many choices, such as the embodied, performative, evocative, critical or reflexive.

Autoethnography

*Adams, Tony E, and Stacy Holman Jones. “The Art of Autoethnography.” In Handbook of Arts Based Research, edited by Patricia Leavy, 141–63. Guilford Press, 2018.

Bochner, Arthur, and Carolyn Ellis. Evocative Autoethnography : Writing Lives and Telling Stories. Routledge, 2016.

Chemi, T. (2021). It is impossible: The teacher’s creative response to the covid-19 emergency and digitalized teaching strategies. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(7), 853-860. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077800420960141

Chemi, T., Pompa, P. S., Firing, K., Torgersen, G. E., & Saeverot, H. (2022). The Artist-Educator Alliance. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press. https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/472029249/The_Artist_Educator_Alliance.pdf

Ellis, Carolyn. “Manifesting Compassionate Autoethnographic Research.” International Review of Qualitative Research, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2017.10.1.54.

*Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). Retrieved from http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095

*Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 733–768). SAGE Publications (UK and US).

Herrmann, A. (2022). The Future of Autoethnographic Criteria. International Review of Qualitative Research, 15(1), 125–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447211049513

Holman Jones, Stacy “Ordinary Objects, or the Importance of Making Implicit Things Matter.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2019.8.3.46.

Holman Jones, Stacy. “Living Bodies of Thought: The ‘Critical’ in Critical Autoethnography.” Qualitative Inquiry, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800415622509.

Markham, Annette. “Reflexivity: Some Techniques for Interpretive Researchers - Future Making Research Consortium,” 2017. http://annettemarkham.com/2017/02/reflexivity-for-interpretive-researchers/.

Markham, Annette N., Katrin Tiidenberg, and Andrew Herman. “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research—Introduction.” Social Media and Society, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118784502.

Pelias, R. J. (2004). A methodology of the heart: Evoking academic and daily life (Vol. 15). Rowman Altamira.

** Collaborative autoethnography**

Chemi, T., Pässilä, A., & Owens, A. (2022). Leading Rebellious Leaders/ship through Radical Trust and Playfulness. In Burnard, P., Mackinlay, E., Rousell, D., & Dragovic, T. (eds.). Doing Rebellious Research: In and beyond the Academy (pp. 373-388). Brill Academic Publishers.

Frølunde, L., Peterken, C., Phillips, L. G., & Chemi, T. (2020). Braiding Dislocated Lives: A collaborative video exploring ‘what’s happening’ under COVID. FigShare. https://figshare.com/articles/media/Braiding_Dislocated_Lives/16992850/1

*Gale, K., Pelias, R. J., Russell, L., Spry, T. & Wyatt, J. (2012). How writing touches: An intimate scholarly collaboration. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Kirkpatrick, D., Porter, S., Speedy, J., & Wyatt, J. (Eds.). (2021). Artful Collaborative Inquiry: Making and Writing Creative, Qualitative Research. New Your & London: Routledge.

Phillips, L. J., Christensen-Strynø, M. B., & Frølunde, L. (2021). Thinking with autoethnography in collaborative research: A critical, reflexive approach to relational ethics. Qualitative Research, Online First. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211033446

Phillips, L. J., Christensen-Strynø, M. B., & Frølunde, L. (2022b). Arts-based co-production in participatory research: harnessing creativity in the tension between process and product. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, 18(2), 391–411. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16445103995426

Speedy, J., & Wyatt, J. (Eds.). (2014). Collaborative writing as inquiry. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Wyatt, J., & Gale, K. (2013). Getting out of selves. Handbook of autoethnography, 300-312.

Readings on arts-based approaches and tactics. ´

Norman K. Denzin (2006) Pedagogy, Performance, and Autoethnography, Text and Performance Quarterly, 26:4, 333-338, DOI: 10.1080/10462930600828774

Markham, Annette N. “‘Go Ugly Early’: Fragmented Narrative and Bricolage as Interpretive Method.” Qualitative Inquiry, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800405280662.

*Markham, Annette, and Anne Harris. “Prompts for Making Sense of a Pandemic: The 21-Day Autoethnography Challenge.” Qualitative Inquiry, November 6, 2020, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420962487.

Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena. “Quiet Theater: The Radical Politics of Silence.” Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617744577.

Writing through the body, embodied knowing and arts-based research

*Johnson, H. (2022). Ten Incitements to Rebellion: Spoken Word as a Social Scientific Research Tool of, and for, Rebellious Research. In Burnard, P., Mackinlay, E., Rousell, D., & Dragovic, T. (eds.). Doing Rebellious Research: In and beyond the Academy (pp. 34-53). Brill Academic Publishers.

Leavy, P. (2017). Introduction to Arts-Based Research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of Arts-Based Research (pp. 4-21). Guilford Publications.

*D. Soyini Madison (2006) The Dialogic Performative in Critical Ethnography, Text and Performance Quarterly, 26:4, 320-324, DOI: 10.1080/10462930600828675

*Tami Spry (2006) A “Performative-I” Copresence: Embodying the Ethnographic Turn in Performance and the Performative Turn in Ethnography, Text and Performance Quarterly, 26:4, 339-346, DOI: 10.1080/10462930600828790

Autoethnography as a post- and/or decolonial method

Although autoethnography as a tradition is most commonly associated with scholars like Ellis, Bochner and Markham, the approach can also be traced to black feminist, post- and decolonial thinkers, including Franz Fanon, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa and bell hooks, among others. These perspectives explore themes like home and (un-)belonging, hybridity, subjectivity and intersecting identities in colonial contexts, challenging the dominance of (white) Western and Eurocentric positions. Furthermore, these perspectives are interlinked with an interest in more-than-human bodies/natures and relational becomings. While engaging with these “other” roots of autoethnography would call for a course of its own, I (Linda) will visit some of these perspectives in my talk on Thursday. The introductory readings are marked with an asterisk below.

Chávez, M. S. (2012). Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool: The Role of Storytelling for Those Who Have No Choice but to do Critical Race Theory. Equity and Excellence in Education, 45(2), 334–348.

*Chawla, D., & Atay, A. (2018). Introduction: decolonizing autoethnography. Cultural studies↔ Critical methodologies, 18(1), 3-8.

Fitzpatrick, E. (2018). A Story of Becoming: Entanglement, Settler Ghosts, and Postcolonial Counterstories. Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies, 18(1), 43–51

*hooks, bell. (1989). Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness. Framework, 36, 15–23.

*Green, C., & Calafell, B. M. (2021). Naming and Reclaiming: Decolonial, Feminist, Performative, and Other Approaches to Critical Autoethnography. In Handbook of Autoethnography (pp. 303-310). Routledge. *Lugones, M. (2003). Introduction. In Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Ohito, E. O. (2019). Thinking through the flesh: a critical autoethnography of racial body politics in urban teacher education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 22(2), 250–268.

Pattathu, A., Barnett-Naghshineh, O., Diallo, O. K., Friborg, N. M., Hammana, Z., van den Berg, L., ... & Ferrier, J. (2021). The Fires Within Us and the Rivers We Form. Teaching Anthropology, 10(4), 92-109.

Simpson, L. (2013). It takes an ocean not to break. In Islands of Decolonial Love. Stories and Songs. Arp Books. (pp. 79-83).

** More-than-human perspectives**

*Bawaka Country, Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S., Lloyd, K., Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs, M., Ganambarr, B., Maymuru, D., & Sweeney, J. (2016). Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space. Progress in Human Geography, 40(4), 455–475.

*Diaz, N. (2020). The First Water Is The Body. In: Postcolonial Love Poem. Faber. (pp. 49-56)

Gillespie, K. (2021). For multispecies autoethnography. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 25148486211052872.

Lapiņa, L. (2020). Re-membering with river Daugava: Poetic engagements with water memory. Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, (21).

Neimanis, A., & Walker, R. L. (2014). Weathering: Climate change and the “thick time” of transcorporeality. Hypatia, 29(3), 558–575.

  Information on activities during the course: panel (Tues.), field visit to Sisters Hope Home (Weds.), and Kitt Johnson (Thurs.)

Panelists will present online (pending confirmation)

• Cross Pollination network http://www.crosspollination.space/

• The presence of absence – Collaborative work with and about bodies in online settings with the Bodies Collective Dream Team type of presentation at ENQI 2022 (5th annual European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry)
  The Bodies Collective returns to ECQI22 with a Dream Team Session about collaborative work with and about bodies in online settings. Together with the participants, we want to reflect on the notion of “presence of absence” of bodies in online settings. Adopting an arts-based approach, we will collaboratively and playfully explore this topic in various embodied ways. Following one of our core concepts, “autonomy as pedagogy”, participants are invited to co-creatively shape the space with us. The Bodies Collective, (2021) ‘Bodyography as Activism in Qualitative Inquiry: The Bodies Collective at ECQI19’, International Review of Qualitative Research, 14(1), pp. 104–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940844720970140

• Group work and autoethnography: autoethnography as a group practice presented at ENQI 2022by former Phd Students at RUC course in 2021 Dina Brode-Roger* (1), Dominika Lisy* (2) 1: KU Leuven; 2: Linköping University This Dream Team sets out to explore autoethnography as a group process. Our Dream Team consists of a range of PhD researchers working with various forms of autoethnography and other methodologies. We met during the summer of 2021 during the online class for PhD students called ‘Autoethnographic methods: Building ethnographic reflexivity through creative arts-based practice’. Building on our group work with video for the class, we would like to dig deeper and understand the process of how one goes from (individual) autoethnography to group autoethnography. (Excerpted from program for ENQI 2022 https://storage.googleapis.com/smooty-1220.appspot.com/uploads/4112/1642095747_DREAMTEAMS1.pdf )

Sisters Hope Introductory video: https://vimeo.com/671434152

Kitt Johnson https://www.kittjohnson.dk/english/