Bringing the Brush to the Table: Methodological Inspirations From the Memoirs of Three Activist-Scholars

• In Event: Culture and Context Worldwide

Abstract

Autoethnography and autobiography are powerful means to link personal experience with cultural and political contexts. In this paper I argue for blurring the boundaries between the two research genres. I discuss memoirs from the United States, England and Egypt – by Ida B. Wells, Sylvia Pankhurst and Nawal El Saadawi – noting their approaches to truth and their narrative strategies. The authors were social activists and public intellectuals, whose work was accessible to a wide audience. Drawing on their examples, I invite contemporary qualitative researchers to expand our perspectives on autoethnography, and to acknowledge writing from a broader pool of genres, times and places., We can increase our field’s ability to inspire change by reclaiming its history and scope.

Author

• Lucinda Carspecken, Indiana University