Critical Auto/biographical Methods as Examined Through Eulogy/Memorialization Studies

• In Event: Methodological Issues in Biographical Research

Abstract

In the last decade, biography and autobiographical genres have expanded to include autoethnography, duoethnography and various forms of innovative life writing/life history. Neat categories fall apart when biographers reflect on the complexity of the lives they seek to represent and instead of a chronological voice, what emerges is pluralistic, gloriously messy, multivoiced, and enhanced by the frames of critical theory. Critical auto/biography projects have the potential to elevate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge. This paper examines the different ways in which critical auto/biographical methods can enhance/elevate life-writing projects by examining eulogy/memorialization narratives. A close examination of innovative approaches used in narrating critical auto/biographies provides researchers with new methodological tools.

Authors

• Thalia Mulvihill, Ball State University

• Raji Swaminathan, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee