A Critical Ethnographer Tells Life Stories: Attempts at Equality and Engagement With African American Women

• In Event: Learning Through Stories: Life Story Methodologies in the Study of Higher Education

Abstract

With nearly a decade of experience in conducting critical qualitative research, particularly critical ethnography focused primarily on African American women’s identity development and success in college, I desired to inquire deeper into the connections between past lived experiences, college experiences, current experiences, and future goals. In a current study of the self-initiated strategies for college success of African American female alumni over a fifty-year time period, I blend life story and critical methodologies. Many of the women are now in their 50s or 60s, reflecting back on their college experience as a piece of a larger puzzle of their lives. While the project emphasizes the women’s reflections on their experiences in college, these experiences cannot be disentangled from their backgrounds, identities, geographic locations, families, and careers. In this symposium, I focus on some of the challenges to critical life story methodology that have emerged in this project such as: building trust with participants, the desire to maintain equality with participants, capturing the connections between past and current experiences, reporting and interpreting complex lived experiences, along with the practical constraints of time and resources. Additionally, I discuss some of the theoretical dilemmas in blending critical and life story methods. Finally, I conclude with some of the lessons that my participants, many of them highly accomplished professional women, have offered me on ways to better approach this work.

Author

• Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, University of Wisconsin