Carolyn Ellis is a prominent writer in the move toward personal, reflexive writing as an approach to academic research. In addition to her landmark books Final Negotiations and The Ethnographic I, she has authored numerous stories that demonstrate the emotional power and academic value of autoethnography.
Now issued as a Routledge Education Classic Edition, Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work collects a dozen of Ellis’s stories—about the loss of her husband, brother and mother; of growing up in small town Virginia; about the ethical work of the ethnographer; and about emotionally charged life issues such as abortion, caregiving, and love. Atop these captivating stories, she adds the component of meta-autoethography—a layering of new interpretations, reflections, and vignettes to her older work.
A new preface text by the author reflects on the subsequent developments in the author’s life and her vision for autoethnography since the book’s original publication. Demonstrating Carolyn’s extensive contribution to autoethnographic scholarship, this new edition offers compelling ideas and stories for qualitative researchers and a student-friendly text for courses.
Preface to the Classic Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Reflecting on Meta-Autoethnography
Part One: Growing Up in a Rural Community, Getting an Education, and Finding My Place in Community Ethnography
Chapter 1: Goin’ to the Store, Sittin’ on the Street, and Runnin’ the Roads: Growing Up in a Rural Southern Neighborhood
Chapter 2: Talking Across Fences: Race Matters
Chapter 3: Investigating the Fisher Folk and Coping with Ethical Quagmires
Part Two: Becoming an Autoethnographer
Chapter 4: Reliving Final Negotiations
Chapter 5: Renegotiating Final Negotiations: From Introspection to Emotional Sociology
Part Three: Surviving and Communicating Family Loss
Chapter 6: Surviving the Loss of My Brother
Chapter 7: Rereading "There Are Survivors": Cultural and Evocative Responses
Chapter 8: Rewriting and Re-Membering Mother
Chapter 9: Coconstructing and Reconstructing "The Constraints of Choice in Abortion"
Part Four: Doing Autoethnography as a Social Project
Chapter 10: Breaking Our Silences/Speaking with Others
Chapter 11: Learning to Be "With" in Personal and Collective Grief
Chapter 12: Connecting Autoethnographic Performance with Community Practice
Part Five: Reconsidering Writing Practices, Relational Ethics, and Rural Communities
Chapter 13: Writing Revision and Researching Ethically
Chapter 14: Returning Home and Revisioning My Story
Notes
References
Name Index by Judy Perry
Subject Index by Judy Perry
About the Author
Biography
Carolyn Ellis is Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Communication and Sociology at the University of South Florida. She has contributed to the narrative and autoethnographic study of human life through integrating ethnographic, literary, and evocative writing to portray and make sense of lived experience in cultural context. Her publications include Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness, Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories (with Arthur Bochner), and Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research and Handbook of Autoethnography, both with Tony E. Adams and Stacy Holman Jones. She co-edits the Routledge book series Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives.
