Autoethnographic Storytelling in Qualitative Research – Virtual Workshop
Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner, University of South Florida
Hosted by The Qualitative Report at Nova Southeastern University (Virtual)
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Eastern USA Time (1 Hour Lunch Break)
Registration Now Open
Workshop Description
This workshop will focus on autoethnographic storytelling in qualitative research. We will emphasize autoethnography as a methodology and a way of life in the human sciences. The workshop will discuss writing and reading personal narratives about lived experience along with reflexively including the researchers’ first-person voice and their interactions with participants in ethnographic projects. Instructors will moderate discussions on perceiving ourselves as story-writers and living a writing life. Topics covered will include: the rise of autoethnography; vulnerable storytelling; sensual writing; living a writing life; memory work and storytelling work; developing scenes, characters, dialogue, and dramatic action; writing vulnerably and evocatively; relational ethics; how to read autoethnography; writing as inquiry; interactive interviews and co-constructed narratives; and evaluating and publishing autoethnography. Participants will have an opportunity to write and present (if they wish) a short evocative story and to read and respond to a personal narrative and to a multi-media presentation on audience resonance. We will address questions on how to incorporate autoethnography into your research and life, and the future of autoethnography and narrative inquiry. This workshop will be of interest to both novice and advanced students, researchers, and practitioners seeking to integrate autoethnographic storytelling into their research, teaching, and everyday life.
Carolyn Ellis is Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the University of South Florida. She has established an international reputation for her contributions to autoethnography and the narrative study of human life. Her awards include the Charles H. Woolbert Research Award and the Distinguished Scholar Award, both from the National Communication Association (NCA); The Legacy Lifetime Award and best book and article awards from NCA’s Ethnography Division; a Lifetime Achievement Award in Qualitative Inquiry, and two best book awards from the International Center for Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois; a Lifetime Achievement Award from The International Conference of Autoethnography in the UK; Charles Horton Cooley best book award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction; Robert E. Park Award for outstanding research monograph from the American Sociological Association Section on Communities and Urban Sociology; two Goodall and Trujillo best books Awards in Narrative Ethnography; McKnight Foundation’s Most Valuable Doctoral Mentor Award; and The Honorary Distinction for special merits in the development of Autoethnography and Narrative Methods from Transdisciplinary Network of Qualitative Researchers (TSBJ) in Poland. Dr. Ellis has produced two films on Holocaust survivors and published eight monographs, seven edited books, and more than 150 articles, chapters, and essays. Her books include the Handbook of Autoethnography (with T. Adams and S. Holman Jones); Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories (with A. Bochner); Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness; and The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography.
Art Bochner is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida. He has published more than 150 articles and book chapters as well as two award winning books, Coming to Narrative: A Personal History of Paradigm Change in the Human Sciences (AltaMira Press/Routledge, 2014) and (with Carolyn Ellis) Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories (Routledge, 2016). He is a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association (NCA) and served as President of NCA and Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Communication. He has received lifetime achievement awards from the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) and the Ethnography Division of NCA, and a Scholar of the Year Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at USF. Dr. Bochner’s endowed awards for scholarship, teaching, and service include NCA’s Charles Woolbert Award, Bernard J. Brommel Award for pioneering research in family communication, Ohio University’s Elizabeth Andersch Award for sustained contributions to Speech Communication Education and Research over one’s entire career, the Samuel Becker Distinguished Service Award, the McKnight Foundation’s William R. Jones Most Valuable Doctoral Mentor Award for mentoring minority doctoral students, two Goodall and Trujillo Best Book Awards in Narrative Ethnography, the Julia T. Wood Teacher-Scholar Award, the Michael Osborn Teacher-Scholar Award, and The Honorary Distinction for special merits in the development of Autoethnography and Narrative Methods from the Coordinating Council of the Transdisciplinary Network of Qualitative Researchers (TSBJ) in Poland.
Art and Carolyn are co-editors of the Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives book series (Routledge). Their life work has been celebrated in special issues of The American Journal of Communication, by multiple special programs at NCA and ICQI, and an edited volume published by Routledge in 2021, Advances in Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry: Reflections on the Legacy of Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner.