A Dilemma: Toward a Distinction Between Biography, Narrative, Memoir, and Autoethnography Research Methods

• In Event: Methodological Issues in Biography and Documentary

Abstract

What does it mean to know a life? And what do how do we interpret learning about that life? Biography, narrative, memoir and autonethnography are among those genres that tell life stories. They are the “methods” of our research. This proposal seeks to understand the nuances between and among these methods and how these methods overlap. In a literary biography of author and activist Grace Paley, Arcana (1994) begins describes her purpose as a biographer: “by translating her life into art, a writer not only ‘saves’—in Grace Paley’s terms—her own life, but offers others the revelation of meaning in that life” (p. 1).

Author

• Della R. Leavitt, Chicago Lesson Study Alliance