Collective Vulnerability, Collaborative Dialogue, and Creative Writing as Dissent: Transnational Feminists’ Utilization of Critical Collaborative Autoethnography

• In Event: Methods Matter: New Directions in Interrogating the Social Contexts of Education

Abstract

Utilizing critical collaborative autoethnography (CCAE) (Chang, et al, 2013; Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011), a group of transnational feminist (Swarr & Nagar, 2010) graduate students reflect upon their employment of arts-based methods, such as letter writing, poetry, and narrative, to agitate academic structures reinstituting coloniality, raciality, patriarchy, and able-bodiedness — among other oppressive modes. Through the use of CCAE and narrative methods and writing-as-sacred framework (Richardson, 2001), the authors engage in collective vulnerability and resistance in an attempt to unravel the binary between academia and activism, encouraging social change through self and collaborative reflection and efforts.

Authors

• Marika Belusa, University of Minnesota

• Somayeh Nikoonazari, University of Minnesota

• Miao He, University of Minnesota

• Panchen Lo, University of Minnesota

• Lindsey Willow Smith, University of Minnesota