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Autobiography Workshop for Postgraduate Students with author Dr Jackie Goode.
The Department of Sociology & Criminology invites Postgraduate Students to come and take part in an Autobiography Workshop with Dr Jackie Goode, author of ''Clever Girls''
Location : CACSSS seminar room, G27, O’Rahilly Building from 2-4pm Thursday May 26th 2022 .
Places are Limited, Please RSVP to gosullivan@ucc.ie for this in-person Workshop .
Autoethnography as a research method has become increasingly popular in the last few decades as what Wiegman calls an ‘autotheoretical impulse’ manifests itself across various disciplines. At the same time, for those coming to it for the first time, it can feel a somewhat mystifying approach, the language used sometimes obfuscatory, the invitation to participate as daunting as it is exciting. Proponents Tony Adams and Stacy Holman Jones parody critiques of the method as being characterised by “… too much personal mess, too much theoretical jargon, too elitist, too sentimental, too removed, too difficult, too easy, too White, too Western, too colonialist, too indigenous, too little artistry, too little theorizing, too little connection of the personal and political, too impractical, too little fieldwork, too few real-world applications”. Such implicit refutations notwithstanding, even experienced practitioners sometimes feel bemused by the proliferation of new variants described with ever more compound nouns and hyphenated adjectives.
This two-hour workshop seeks to demystify the approach by looking at its origins and underlying concepts, giving illustrative examples of its use and offering participants the opportunity to ‘have a go’ at some autoethnographic writing of their own, before discussing ways of developing this and ending with a Q&A.
Jackie Goode has published autoethnographic articles in a variety of mainstream sociological journals. She edited the (2019) collection ‘Clever Girls: autoethnographies of class, gender and ethnicity’, of which Gail Lewis wrote: “This is an urgent and extraordinary book! If there was any doubt about the power of autoethnography to produce textured, nuanced, powerful expositions of the formation of subjectivity in its classed, gendered and racialized complexity, then this book dispels that doubt. The vibrancy of the autoethnographic accounts contained in this book, together with the methodological rigour (and) theoretical sophistication … hold together that which is so often rendered apart in academic writings: ‘experience-near’ accounts of situated lives along with analytic nuance. If we want to understand something of the gendered, raced, classed realities that are buffeted by, enduring within, yet destabilised and refused by people as they negotiate the structures and desires that thwart and propel them, then this book is must.” Dr Gail Lewis, Birkbeck.
If participants get the chance, they may find it useful in advance to view the film based on the book, which can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okAVuc4Uwl0