Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to systematically analyze and write (“graphy”) personal lived experiences (“auto”) in order to understand their relationship to culture and the broader cultural experience (“ethno”) (Ellis 2004, Ellis and Bochner 2016). While generally subsumable under the umbrella term of “life writing”, autoethnographic texts challenge canonical ways of writing, (self-)representing, and researching. For the autoethnographer, research is a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act (Adams and Holman Jones, 2008) that culminates in a politically-charged text, which is both autobiography and ethnography. As such, autoethnographic texts are “predicated on the ability to invite readers into the lived experience of a presumed “other” and to experience it viscerally” (Ellis and Bochner 2016). In our seminar, we will read and analyze a number of different autoethnographic texts and highlight the productivity inherent within the genre as a means to enhance our understandings of the relationship between text, lived experience, and socio-cultural realities of power, oppression, and social privilege. We will work mainly with approaches stemming from Gender Studies and Critical Race Theory.
SCHEDULE
1 April 8 Preliminaries and Introduction
2 April 15 Autoethnography: Theories and Concepts
3 April 22 Easter break
4 April 29 Autoethnographic accounts of/as performances of gender and sexuality (Amber L. Johnson)
5 May 6 Autoethnographic accounts of/as performances of gender and sexuality (Bryant Keith Alexander)
6 May 13 Autoethnographic accounts of/as performances of gender and sexuality (Patrick Santoro)
7 May 20 Autoethnographic accounts of/as performances of race and raciality (Robin M. Boylorn)
8 May 27 Autoethnographic accounts of/as performances of race and raciality (Desiree Yomtoob)
9 June 3 Autoethnographic accounts as racial appropriation: Rachel Dolezal (In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World [2017], The Rachel Divide [Netflix 2018])
10 June 10 Pentecost break
11 June 17 Cancelled
12 June 24 Autoethnographic accounts as racial appropriation: Rachel Dolezal (In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World [2017], The Rachel Divide [Netflix 2018])
13 July 1 Autoethnographic accounts as racial appropriation: Rachel Dolezal (In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World [2017], The Rachel Divide [Netflix 2018])
14 July 8 Revision/Conclusion
- Lehrende/r: Corinna Lenhardt