Handbook of Autoethnography

In this definitive reference volume, almost fifty leading thinkers and practitioners of autoethnographic research―from four continents and a dozen disciplines―comprehensively cover its vision, opportunities and challenges. Chapters address the theory, history, and ethics of autoethnographic practice, representational and writing issues, the personal and relational concerns of the autoethnographer, and the link between researcher and social justice. A set of 13 exemplars show the use of these principles in action. Autoethnography is one of the most popularly practiced forms of qualitative research over the past 20 years, and this volume captures all its essential elements for graduate students and practicing researchers.

Stacy Holman Jones is Associate Professor, Graduate Coordinator, and Co-Director of the Performance Ensemble at California State University, Northridge. Her research focuses broadly on how performance constitutes socially, culturally, and politically resistive and transformative activity; how gender and desirous identities are created, made known, and negotiated; and how the work of feminism gets done in and though interpretive methods, especially cultural critique, critical autoethnography, and performative writing. She is the author of Kaleidoscope Notes: Writing Women’s Music and Organizational Culture (1998) and Torch Singing: Performing Resistance and Desire from Edith Piaf to Billie Holiday (2007). Stacy is the recipient of several research and teaching/mentoring awards, including the Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award and the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender’s Feminist Teacher/Mentor Award. She teaches graduate courses in performance, feminist studies and qualitative methods, including performing ethnography and autoethnography.

Tony E. Adams is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Theatre at Northeastern Illinois University. Currently, he studies and teaches about interpersonal and family communication, qualitative research, communication theory, and sex, gender, and sexuality; he has published more than 30 articles, book chapters, and reviews in these areas. His book, Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same Sex Desire (2011), received the 2012 National Communication Association Ethnography Division Best Book Award and the 2012 Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender Outstanding Book Award.

Carolyn Ellis is ?Distinguished? ?P?rofessor of communication and sociology at the University of South Florida. She is honored to have received the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award in Qualitative Inquiry from The International Center for Qualitative Inquiry. Her books are foundational to the study of autoethnography and include The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography; Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work; and Music Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnography Sing/Making Music Personal.