Registration and preparation:

Applications should be sent through the online registration system by 10 October 2024. Sign up here: https://events.ruc.dk/autoethnographicmethods2024

Applicants will be notified by e-mail by October 14.

The working language of the course is English for application materials, lectures, and discussions.

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 title of the document. The three documents should be sent to: ikh-phdadmin@ruc.dk

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 know that students are in different stages of their PhD projects and have different approaches to autoethnography. These autoethnographic explorations will be used to screen applications, match students in groups, and give feedback during the course. The proposal should give a sense of how and why you (might) use autoethnography in your PhD project; 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” but rather work-in-progress with place for playfulness, exploration and openness. 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 logbook, video diary, poetry, memory work, video performance 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)

Assoc. Professor Tatiana Chemi, AAU and Lisbeth Frølunde will be teaching on the course, contributing with broad experience in autoethnography and arts-based research. (Tatiana’s profile: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/124693

Visits and field studies will include the Afro-Nordic Feminist Research Collective Care, the performance art/research collective Sisters Hope, and site-specific work in Copenhagen with the artist Nana-Francisca Schöttlander.

Details regarding other guest teachers, panels, field studies and course activities will be announced in September 2024.

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. On participation: The course is interactive and based on active participation. We will engage in group work, artistic production and site visits around Roskilde University and in Copenhagen- including a visit with the collective Sisters Hope (https://sistershope.dk/) and workshop with the artist Nana-Francisca Schöttlander (https://nanafrancisca.wixsite.com/nanafrancisca). It is thus a requirement that participants are present for the four days that the course takes place, starting at 9am on Tuesday November 19 and ending at 3.30PM

Program will be finalized in September 2024.

Tuesday 19/11, 9AM – the course starts at Roskilde University (half an hour by train from Copenhagen). One of the days, we will be in Copenhagen, and we recommend organizing accommodation in Copenhagen.

Friday 22/11, 3.30PM – the course ends at RUC

4 ECTS

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.

16 participants

A sample of Course literature- will be updated in September 2024

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.