Front Stage, Backstage, and the Negotiation of Academic Identity: A Collaborative Autoethnography

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:40 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Unveiling Self: Autoethnography, Identity, and the Art of Becoming (Table 2)

Abstract

While academia strives to be inclusive of student cultures and backgrounds, many institutions fail to creatively engage scholars in ways that support academic identity development. During the spring 2024 semester, a team of five scholars in a graduate course conducted a collaborative autoethnographic (CAE) study, framed by Goffman’s (1959) theatrical concept of frontstage and backstage, to reflect on and analyze how university settings and actors inform how scholars perform presentations of self to various campus audiences. Data were generated through autoethnographic narratives, arts-based elicitation, creative artifacts, fieldnotes and analytic memos. Findings​ reveal that the performance of academic identity involves an ongoing negotiation about what to reveal and what to conceal in academic contexts in collaboration with institutional actors and settings.

Authors

• Sarah Gomez, University of Arizona

• Gabriella M. Shriner, University of Arizona

• Ashley D. Domínguez, University of Arizona