2nd Edition
Handbook of Autoethnography
Awards
2023 H.L. “Bud” Goodall, Jr. and Nick Trujillo “It’s a Way of Life” Award in Narrative Ethnography from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.
“Meditations on the Story I Cannot Write: Reflexivity, Autoethnography, and the Possibilities of Maybe,” received the 2023 National Communication Association's Ethnography Division Best Book Chapter Award.
The second edition of the award-winning Handbook of Autoethnography is a thematically organized volume that contextualizes contemporary practices of autoethnography and examines how the field has developed since the publication of the first edition in 2013. Throughout, contributors identify key autoethnographic themes and commitments and offer examples of diverse, thoughtful, effective, applied, and innovative autoethnography.
The second edition is organized into five sections:
- In Section 1, Doing Autoethnography, contributors explore definitions of autoethnography, identify and demonstrate key features of autoethnography, and engage philosophical, relational, cultural, and ethical foundations of autoethnographic practice.
- In Section 2, Representing Autoethnography, contributors discuss forms and techniques for the process and craft of creating autoethnographic projects, using various media in/as autoethnography, and marking and making visible particular identities, knowledges, and voices.
- In Section 3, Teaching, Evaluating, and Publishing Autoethnography, contributors focus on supporting and supervising autoethnographic projects. They also offer perspectives on publishing and evaluating autoethnography.
- In Section 4, Challenges and Futures of Autoethnography, contributors consider contemporary challenges for autoethnography, including understanding autoethnography as a feminist, posthumanist, and decolonialist practice, as well as a method for studying texts, translations, and traumas.
- The volume concludes with Section 5, Autoethnographic Exemplars, a collection of sixteen classic and contemporary texts that can serve as models of autoethnographic scholarship.
With contributions from more than 50 authors representing more than a dozen disciplines and writing from various locations around the world, the handbook develops, refines, and expands autoethnographic inquiry and qualitative research. This text will be a primary resource for novice and advanced researchers alike in a wide range of social science disciplines.
Preface
Autoethnography in the Time of Uncertainty: Finding Hope and Purpose
Carolyn Ellis
Introduction
Making Sense and Taking Action: Creating a Caring Community of Autoethnographers
Tony E. Adams, Stacy Holman Jones, and Carolyn Ellis
SECTION 1: DOING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY
Section Introduction
Doing Autoethnography
Pat Sikes
1. Mediations on the Story I Cannot Write: Reflexivity, Autoethnography, and the Possibilities of Maybe
Keith Berry
2. Sketching Subjectivities
Susanne Gannon
3. Individual and Collaborative Autoethnography for Social Science Research
Heewon Chang
4. Autoethnography as Acts of Love
Andrew F. Herrmann
5. Frank and the Gift, or the Untold Told: Provocations for Autoethnography and Therapy
Jonathan Wyatt
6. Border Smugglers: Betweener Bodies Making Knowledge and Expanding the Circle of Us
Claudio Moreira and Marcelo Diversi
7. Self and Others: Ethics in Autoethnographic Research
Jillian A. Tullis
SECTION 2: REPRESENTING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY
Section Introduction
Nepantleric Traveling: Writing and Reading Autoethnographies as a Mode of Inquiry
Kakali Bhattacharya
8. Writing Autoethnography: The Personal, Poetic, and Performative as Compositional Strategies
Ronald J. Pelias
9. Artistic Autoethnography: Exploring the Interface Between Autoethnography and Artistic Research
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet
10. How Intersectional Autoethnography Saved my Life: A Plea for Intersectional Inquiry
Amber Johnson
11. Collaborative Autoethnography: From Rhythm and Harmony to Shared Stories and Truths
David Carless and Kitrina Douglas
12. The Matter of Performative Autoethnography
Tami Spry
13. Exo-autoethnography as Method for Research on Intergenerational Trauma Transmission
Anna Denejkina
14. Doing Digital and Visual Autoethnography
Kate Coleman
SECTION 3: TEACHING, EVALUATING, AND PUBLISHING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY
Section Introduction
Purposes, Perspectives, and Possibilities: Enlivening Debates about Autoethnography
Laura L. Ellingson
15. Autoethnography as/in Higher Education
Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, Daisy Pillay, and Inbanathan Naicker
16. Embracing Autoethnographic Anxiety: The Joyous Potential of Teaching and Advising Relationships
Sandra L. Pensoneau-Conway and Darren J. Valenta
17. Thinking Through Rejection: Reflections on Writing and Publishing Autoethnography
James Salvo
18. Publishing Autoethnography: A Thrice-Told Tale
Alec Grant, Nigel Patrick Short, and Lydia Turner
19. When Judgment Calls: Making Sense of Criteria for Evaluating Different Forms of Autoethnography
Andrew C. Sparkes
20. Failing Autoethnography
Sophie Tamas
SECTION 4: CHALLENGES AND FUTURES OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY
Section Introduction
Challenges and Futures of Autoethnography
Norman K. Denzin
21. Translation and Tango: Decolonizing Autoethnography
Ahmet Atay
22. Naming and Reclaiming Decolonial, Feminist, Performative, and Other Approaches to Critical Autoethnography
Caleb Green and Bernadette Calafell
23. Autoethnography Crosses Cultural Borders
Gresilda A. Tilley-Lubbs
24. Textual Experience: A Relational Reading of Culture
Aisha Durham
25. Writing Feminist Autoethnography: A Memo/ry to the Personal-is-Political
Elizabeth Mackinlay
26. Girl, Disrupted: Trauma, Narrative Disruptions, and Autoethnography
Donna F. Henson
27. Posthumanist Autoethnography
Travis Brisini and Jake Simmons
SECTION 5: AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC EXEMPLARS
Section Introduction
Poking Around the Neighborhood: Autoethnography and the Search for…
Christopher N. Poulos
28. "Sit with Your Legs Closed!" And Other Sayin’s from My Childhood
Robin M. Boylorn
29, Risk and Reward in Autoethnography: Revisiting "Chronicling an Academic Depression"
Barbara J. Jago
30. On Evocative Autoethnography: Talking Over Bird on the Wire
Csaba Osvath and Arthur P. Bochner
31. Remixing/Reliving/Revisioning "My Mother is Mentally Retarded"
Carol Rambo
32. I AM (Still) an Angry Black Woman: Black Feminist Autoethnography, Voice, and Resistance
Rachel Alicia Griffin
33. Staying I(ra)n: Negotiating Queer Identity through Narrative Trespass from within the Iranian American Closet
Shadee Abdi
34. Revisiting "Body and Bulimia Revisited"
Lisa M. Tillmann
35. That Baby will Cost You (REDUX): A Story of an Intended Ambivalent Pregnancy (and Motherhood)
Sandra L. Faulkner
36. Revisiting "Bobcat" on the Eve of My 25-Year High School Reunion
Ragan Fox
37. A Year of Encounters with Privilege
Esther Fitzpatrick
38. The American Dental Dream: Sinking My Teeth Back In
Nathan Hodges
39. Wayfinding the "Tapu" in Critical Autoethnography
Fetuai Iosefo, Dave Fa’avae, and Haami Hawkins
40. Researching the Taboo: Reflections on an Ethno-autography
Fiona Murray
41. Using "Auto-Ethnography" to Write about Racism
Yassir Morsi
42. Walk, Walking, Talking Home
Devika Chawla
43. An Autoethnography of What Happens
Kathleen Stewart
Biography
Tony E. Adams is a Professor and Chair of Communication at Bradley University, USA.
Stacy Holman Jones is Professor in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University, Australia.
Carolyn Ellis is Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the University of South Florida, USA.
