Co-Constructing a Collaborative Autoethnography: An Inspection Into the Experiences of Five Women of Color Doctoral Students

• In Event: A Critical Exploration of Womxn of Color Feminisms, Theories, and Methodologies in Higher Education

Abstract

This study documents the process of five doctoral women of color in developing a critical collaborative autoethnography intended to explore their relationships with feminism through a graduate level course offered in the Inquiry department at a large, public Midwest institution. The researchers use a feminist methodology to highlight and validate the lived experiences through personal reflections and collaborative discussions in an effort to capture the stories of five racially diverse women of color identifying feminists. Given that research on the experiences of doctoral women of color remains sparse, this paper discusses an intersectional feminist approach to documenting their narratives that encompass histories, realities, identities, conflicts, inter/intra-race coalitions, and activism.
Autoethnographies, typically written as solo works, is a qualitative research method that centers the personal story of the author. However, Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez (2013) offered an extension, emphasizing collectivism in the form of collaborative autoethnography (CAE). CAE is a qualitative research method that enables researchers to collectively gather autobiographical data and interpret these data for a deeper understanding of self and community in relation to sociocultural contexts (Chang et. al, 2013). Further, autoethnographies legitimize personal narratives as a way to interrogate their institutional experiences (Hernandez, Nguinjiri, & Chang, 2015; Chang, Longman, Franco, 2014). This was particularly relevant for our exploration of the intersection of our racialized and gendered identities.
Our study included two phases of data collection. The first phase of data collection asked participants to write their own autoethnography individually guided by a prompt. After participants wrote their individual autoethnographies, they met to discuss common themes across what was written. After coming together and identifying the common themes, participants crafted six prompts drawn from the themes to further explore, thus entering the second phase of data collection. Participants were asked to create narratives responding to the prompts collectively derived. Our final product is presented as a script of a play and each prompt reflects a segment of our lives and progresses in a chronological nature. Through each step, participants came together to reflect, identify, and discuss the collective, co-constructed process of creating a collaborative autoethnography and what it entails.
The examination of the process of five doctoral women of color coming together to co-construct a collaborative autoethnography is valuable for several reasons. The first is that it offers insight to how graduate students of color engage with feminist methodologies in an academic setting. Second, it demonstrates critical components of research and how they may embody feminist perspectives, such as collaboration, reflexivity, and data analysis. Lastly, this paper presents suggestive approaches to pursuing intersectional scholarship that seeks to center race and gender through various forms of storytelling.

Authors

• Amy Wang, University of California - San Diego

• Dajanae Palmer, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Megan Covington, United Negro College Fund

• Vanessa S. Na, University of California - San Diego

• Ting-Han Chang, Indiana University - Bloomington