Identity as Inquiry: Living and Researching From the Borderlands

• In Event: Living It Out: Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry as Politic and Practice in the Academy

Abstract

As a white, queer, able-bodied, culturally Jewish, atheist, middle-class, transgender individual, the author lives in and research from the borderlands (Anzaldúa, 2007) of identity. This presentation explores the connections between the dimensions of personal identity and the scope, methodologies(s), and representation of research as a young scholar. Utilizing an autoethnographic approach—itself a disruptive form of data collection and knowledge representation— the author examines issues of self presentation and professional development in a disciplinary context that is increasingly ambivalent to disruptive formations of identity and inquiry. Focusing on encouraging advising and mentoring relationships that support alternative methodologies, the author advocates for the proliferation of research agendas and lines of inquiry situated intimately in one’s personal identities and experiences for the purpose expand who we are, who we come to know, and the populations and communities who become known to us.

Author

• Z Nicolazzo, Miami University - Oxford