AltaMira Press
Pages: 448
•
Trim: 6 x 9⅛
978-0-7591-0051-0 • Paperback • December 2003 • $67.00 • (£52.00)
978-0-7591-1586-6 • eBook • January 2004 • $63.50 • (£49.00)
Carolyn Ellis is professor of communication and sociology in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. She is the author of Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness (1995) and coeditor (with Arthur Bochner) of Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing (1996), Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics (2002), and the AltaMira book series Ethnographic Alternatives.
1 Cast of Characters
2 Preface
3 Class 1: Introductions and Interruptions
4 Class 2: The Call of Autoethnographic Stories
5 Class 3: Autoethnography in Interview Research
6 Class 4: Autoethnographic Projects: Putting Self into Research
7 Class 5: Writing Field Notes, Interviews, and Stories: Issues of Memory and Truth
8 Class 6: Writing Therapeutically, Vulnerably, Evocatively, and Ethically
9 Class Interludes: Living Autoethnography: Life Informs Work Informs Life (with Arthur P. Bochner)
10 Class 7: Writing as Inquiry
11 Friendship Interlude: Artful Autoethnography (with Karen Scott-Hoy)
12 Class 8: Autoethnographic Forms of Writing
13 Class 9: Final Projects
14 Class 10: Evaluating and Publishing Autoethnography
15 Community Interlude: Taking Autoethnogrpahic Research to a Domestic Abuse Shelter
16 Participant Interludes: Autoethnographic Conversations about Autoethnography
17 Author Interlude: Writing a Methodological Novel: Thinking Like an Ethnographer, Writing Like a Novelist
18 Appendix 1: Suggested Syllabus and Readings for Autoethnography Class
19 Appendix 2: Chart of Impressionistice and Realist Ethnography
20 Appendix 3: Guidelines for Writing Personal Narrative Papers
21 Appendix 4: Editing Personal Narratives
22 Bibliography
23 Index
24 About the Author
The Ethnographic I is such a rich stew—part textbook, part autoethnography, part novel, part transcript, part confession, and part manifesto—that the reader just has to sit back and enjoy the flavors. This wonderful feast, served by a master teacher, satiates with every spoonful.
— Ronald J. Pelias, Southern Illinois University
This is a masterful book that tells a compelling tale about a master class in ethnography taught by a master teacher and scholar on the subject. Carolyn Ellis, in a stroke of genius, adopts the form of a novel to write an imaginative, emotionally rich, and methodologically layered account of teaching the one course that everyone in our field wishes they could take from the one person they wish they could take it with. And now, with this wonderful book, we can. It is not just the story form and truly original voice that separates this text from any competition. It is the undeniable fact that chapter-by-chapter readers gain the knowledge and skills that will help them become personal ethnographers as well as invites them into ongoing scholarly conversations that frequently question as much as advocate them. By the time I finished The Ethnographic I, the wisdom of using fiction to show us what goes on in her course—and in the complex and often conflicted lives of students and teachers constructingit—was abundantly clear. What better way to teach methods than by working them into and through the lives of those who use them? For all of these good reasons, this book is a genuine page turner and will undoubtedly have profound influences on how w
— H. L. Goodall, Univ of North Carolina, Greensboro
WOW! Carolyn Ellis's book has accomplished an extraordinarily difficult feat—a textbook that superbly covers contemporary issues for qualitative researchers and tells a story. She has, indeed, written a methodological novel. It is engaging and educational—a treasure I will be sharing with my graduate methods seminar because I want them to have the experience of Carolyn's teaching, her autoethnography, and her invitation to join the larger community of qualitative researchers. Wow!
— Laurel Richardson, Ohio State University
The Ethnographic I serves as a useful text to engage the issues that autoethnography raises both as genre and alternative discourses for authoring self and others.
— Qualitative Social Research
Ellis's work reflects the increasingly significant role of personal narrative in post-modern ethnography, a significance that encompasses such subjective texts as memoirs, anecdotes, and confessions. . . Ellis's work. . . offers a reference point for what no doubt will be many future "genre bending" contributions.
— Biography
This is a masterful book that tells a compelling tale about a master class in ethnography taught by a master teacher and scholar on the subject. Carolyn Ellis, in a stroke of genius, adopts the form of a novel to write an imaginative, emotionally rich, and methodologically layered account of teaching the one course that everyone in our field wishes they could take from the one person they wish they could take it with. And now, with this wonderful book, we can. It is not just the story form and truly original voice that separates this text from any competition. It is the undeniable fact that chapter-by-chapter readers gain the knowledge and skills that will help them become personal ethnographers as well as invites them into ongoing scholarly conversations that frequently question as much as advocate them. By the time I finished The Ethnographic I, the wisdom of using fiction to show us what goes on in her course—and in the complex and often conflicted lives of students and teachers constructing it—was abundantly clear. What better way to teach methods than by working them into and through the lives of those who use them? For all of these good reasons, this book is a genuine page turner and will undoubtedly have profound influences on how we think about teaching personal ethnography.
— H. L. Goodall, Univ of North Carolina, Greensboro