Autoethnographic Methods: Building Reflexivity through Critical and Collaborative Arts-based Practice

*Roskilde University*

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

Application deadline: 10 October