The last decade identity is often and very fruitfully conceptualized as "narrative identity." Neither for individuals nor for groups is identity a given beforehand anymore. On the contrary, identity has to be constructed in an inductive way continuously. Three qualitative research methods are applied to explore in an inductive way the…

The study is an autoethnographic case study of one Black man's experiences, both within and outside academe. Two strands of vignettes--one personal, the other professional--run throughout the paper. The two strands are presented in a format similar to parallel editing used in film editing. The overarching goal of the piece is to offer a view of…

In this paper, we consider how the life story develops through the creation of self-event connections in narrating experiences. We first outline the ways in which such connections have been implied by existing work on the life story, and then consider the varieties of such connections that we see in our own work. That work suggests that self-event…

University of the Pacific is a private, comprehensive university with a College of Arts and Sciences and six professional schools, and with a population of more than four thousand students on its main campus in the ethnically diverse central valley city of Stockton, California. The signature component of Pacific's general education program is the…

According to Martin, Benjamin, Prosser, and Trigwell (1999), the scholarship associated with teaching consists of three related activities which integrate the key functions of higher education, namely engagement with the existing knowledge on teaching and learning; self-reflection on teaching and learning in one's discipline; and the public…

The authors describe a project that illustrates the use of autoethnography as a research methodology to better understand their decisions to become professors. Strangers to one another, both authors discovered common motivations to make mid-life changes in opposition to cultural expectations. A review of the literature on epidemic theory,…

The choice of a teacher to be "out" in the classroom is perhaps unadvisable, possibly joyous, potentially disastrous, positively political, and just plain hard. For me, the choice to be out in the classroom has met with some consequences that do not match my expectations. This essay is an autoethnographic writing performance of my identity as a…

American Indian women's autobiographies recount a specific type of life experience that has often been overlooked, one that is equally important in understanding the genre and to develop ways of reading these texts that balance the recovery and recognition of the Native voice and agency contained within them with the processes of creation and the…

The field of education has recently recognized the importance of investigating how issues of race impact equity in mathematics education. Historically there has been great emphasis on researching how to support teachers in their practice. Specifically examining the intersection of all these components is a growing focus of a cadre of researchers.…

This article is about life story work with people with learning disabilities. It talks about reading and writing stories, and listening to them. Telling your life story, writing it down and talking about it with others can be an important part of self-advocacy for people with learning disabilities. Life stories are helpful when they are told or…

Discusses the recent interest in using narrative in research, examining the scope of the concept of narrative, the generic categories of narrative and discourse, difficulties defining narrative, persistent fallacies in narratological analysis, narrative as discursive reality, the problem of efficacy in narrative conventions and human action, and…

Two studies examined age differences in autobiographical reasoning within narratives about personal experiences. In Study 1 (n = 63), people completed brief interviews about turning points and crises in their lives. Older participants were more likely to narrate crises in ways that connected the experience to the speaker's sense of self, that is,…

This May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture relates the career of an artist and illustrator of children's books whose best-known works for young children are "Dancing in the Moon" and "Ape in a Cape." School years, apprenticeship, first books, wood engravings, use of illustrations, and the generation gap are highlighted. (EJS)

Examines four autobiographical self-narratives to see not what they are about, but how the narrators construct themselves. Proposes that an individual's ways of telling and conceptualizing eventually become recipes for structuring experience itself (past and future). (SR)

Presents an autobiographical essay of editor Jean Karl, as well as appreciations by authors Phyllis Naylor and Lillian Moore. (ARH)