Autobiography and biography are productive genres for exploring historical events and processes, even as such works have sometimes held a peripheral role in the "community" of history of education scholarship. This paper focuses on the pedagogical productivity and challenges of a recent graduate course the author offered in auto/biographical research as a method of introducing students, indirectly, to issues in educational history, particularly those affecting the lives of marginalized people. The course primarily focused on methodological approaches and issues in the craft of auto/biographical scholarship. However, the author also conceptualized the course as a productive site for incorporating historical issues, in part as a response to low levels of student interest in history of education courses at the author's public research institution and the general college, and increasingly on a national level, malaise regarding foundations courses in general.