September 19: Auto/biography as a research method

Genre expectations.  We began class by reviewing what we mean by genre and genre analysis.  A genre is a class of texts (like mystery novels, or love letters, or RPGs, or 5-paragraph essays) that has a particular audience who expects to use/read the text in a particular way (for agreed on purposes) and which generally has characteristic subject materials and forms.   In this definition we are using the term text to mean a representation (in print, on film, through drawing, or in digital code) that can be interpreted.  In this definition, books, movies, song lyrics, web sites, and youtube videos  are all texts - and there are "genres" (different classes) within each group of these different kinds of texts.  For example,for movies there are action films, comedies, dramas, mysteries, horror, scifi, chickflicks etc = each with its own set of audience expectations & formal conventions ( the order, kinds of images/characters, and other features related to how it looks).

One way to analyze genre expectations for a particular genre or text is to ask the following questions:

Who is the text written for?  

What is the text's  purpose (what does it set out to accomplish)?

What  is its focus?

How is it organizaed?

For our purposes - we will also want to think about patterns in how authors create texts within particular research genres.  So - as we talk about methods, for each sample research essay we will think about: 

• what research genre(s) does this text draw from?
• what methods did the author use?  
• what skills did s/he need?  

Pattern for this class:  As we study each of the research methods - we will begin by talking about a particualar example from the research - and then you will read an essay in Griffin which talks about issues and ideas associated with that research method.  Today we talked about auto/biography.  I began by setting up Thursday's reading (pointing out 3 issues Evans identifies as problems with autobiographica research) - and by asking you to think about some of the issues you might use auto/biography to explore (good list).

Discussion of Oates interview.  Discussion of the Oates' interview about Blonde focused on her statements on what she wanted to do (the book's purpose); her process for writing the book, and her methods/sources for information.   This discussion validated Evans' point that auto/biography is not simply a presentation of facts = but a statement about the time and place where the subject's life took place.  Details should be in your notes.

Examples of how researchers use auto/biographical methods:  I then provided an overview of 5 texts that use auto/biography to develop research in language and literature.

Education is my Agenda: Biography of Gertrude Williams

Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary

Essay by two researchers who use their children's experiences as evidence of literacy learning at school

Biography of Virginia Woolf

Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a face

These texts are available at the receptionist's desk in the Writing Center. DO NOT TAKE THE BOOKS OUT OF THE CENTER.  If someone is reading the book you are interested in - I strongly suggest that you work together.  For Thursday, you are asked to do a  "scan" of one of these texts - and to answer the questions that will produce a sort of genre analysis on your blog.  Yes - lots of this will be speculative - and that is OK.  Do some thinking. The research tools we build for this course will be as good as the work you put into them.

Read: Evans in Griffin (p 31); Senior Seminar Syllabus (Rich) posted to right

Blog 3: Choose one of the auto/biographical research texts previewed in class today (available in the Writing Center) and analyze it in terms of:

• purpose (what was the author trying to do?  what is the main point of the text)
• process: how do you think the author went about producing this text?  What do you think s/he did to write it?
• methods/sources: what materials did the author gather to produce this text?  How did s/he gather them?  This list might include things like interviewing (say who), analyzing texts (what kinds of texts), and reflecting on experiences for methods - and it might include things like the subject's journals or writings (be specific is possible); archival holdings at library's or special collections; newspapers, film archives, classroom observations and so on.  

The purpose of this blog is for us to create a comprehensive list of the methods + skills auto/biographers use.  We will share this list - and you can have it as a reference for any auto/biographical work you might choose to do.

In class Thursday we will spend the first half identifying methods, sources, tools and processes for auto/biographical research - and the second half discussing the limitations of this approach.  Good class and see you Thursday.