Trickster in Tweed


Book Description

How do academics survive the bureaucracy, the petty jealousies, the absurdities of operating in the university? More important, how do they, as humans, cope with the darker shadows that enter professional lives-- illness, sorrow, death? Coyote, The Trickster, a well known figure in the American Indian world, is also the icon for communication scholar Tom Frentz. Frentz uses the survival strategies of The Trickster in his articulate, amusing, and often emotional autoethnography of striving for quality through the worlds of academia and medicine.




Trickster's Point


Book Description

Now in paperback The action never stops in the New York Times bestselling Cork O'Connor mystery series--and this time O'Connor is targeted by a political assassin. William Kent Krueger's latest New York Times bestseller is a thrilling exploration of the motives, both good and ill, that lead men and women into the difficult, sometimes deadly, political arena. The dying don't easily become the dead. Cork O'Connor is sitting in the shadow of a towering monolith known as Trickster's Point, deep in the Minnesota wilderness. With him is Jubal Little, who is favored to become the first Native American elected governor of Minnesota and who is slowly dying with an arrow through his heart. Although the men have been bow-hunting, a long-standing tradition among these two friends, this is no hunting accident. The arrow turns out to be one of Cork's, and he becomes the primary suspect in the murder. He understands full well that he's been set up. As he works to clear his name and track the real killer, he remembers his long, complex relationship with the tough kid who would grow up to become a professional football player, a populist politician, and the lover of the first woman to whom Cork ever gave his heart. Jubal was known by many for his passion, his loyalty, and his ambition. Only Cork knows that he was capable of murder.




Life After Leaving


Book Description

After leaving her twelve-year marriage, Sophie Tamas went to the local women's shelter to ask if she had been abused. The result is Life after Leaving, a performative, arts-based journey into the aftermath of spousal abuse and the endless struggle to make sense of loss. We see Sophie's world—the academic lectures, the therapy sessions, the childrearing, the dealings with an ex-spouse, the house reconstruction—as she looks for answers in the literature and in the lives of other women. Both lyrical and theoretical, autoethnographic and analytical, her captivating story builds to a chorus of voices, as her study participants express the loving, longing, pain, hope, and frustration of their experiences after leaving abusive relationships. The text closes with insightful and surprising suggestions for reframing "recovery". An earlier version of this manuscript was short-listed for the AERA Arts-Based Dissertation Award and won the 2011 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. Sponsored by the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta.




Playing with Purpose


Book Description

Mary M. and Kenneth J. Gergen make a strong case for enriching the social sciences through performative work, establishing a framework for performative research and including many of their own performance works.




Narrating the Closet


Book Description

Adams makes use of interviews, personal narratives, and autoethnography to analyze lived, relational experiences of sexuality, using the closet as metaphor.




Coming to Narrative


Book Description

Reflecting on a 50 year university career, Distinguished Professor Arthur Bochner, former President of the National Communication Association, discloses a lived history, both academic and personal, that has paralleled many of the paradigm shifts in the human sciences inspired by the turn toward narrative. He shows how the human sciences—especially in his own areas of interpersonal, family, and communication theory—have evolved from sciences directed toward prediction and control to interpretive ones focused on the search for meaning through qualitative, narrative, and ethnographic modes of inquiry. He outlines the theoretical contributions of such luminaries as Bateson, Laing, Goffman, Henry, Gergen, and Richardson in this transformation. Using diverse forms of narration, Bochner seamlessly layers theory and story, interweaving his professional and personal life with the social and historical contexts in which they developed.




Leaning


Book Description

Explore with Ronald Pelias the physical space between people, and learn the metaphorical importance of leaning, in this personal, performative narrative about relationships.




Transcribing Silence


Book Description

Kristine Muñoz’s volume of short narrative works-- autoethnographies and fictional stories—explore many dimensions of silence, a crucial but often overlooked communication phenomenon, one that drives much of everyday talk and relationships. Framed by an introductory essay that synthesizes research on silence and the unsaid, guides for reflection and expansion after each narrative, and a conclusion that ponders ethnographic writing, this volume is an essential work for those who study and teach interpersonal communication.




Media and Affective Mythologies


Book Description

This book provides a timely political insight to show how mythology plays an affective role in our lives. Brexit, bankers, institutional scandals, the far right, and Russell Brand’s “revolution” are just some of the issues tackled through this innovative and interdisciplinary discourse analysis. Through multimedia case studies, Kelsey explores the psychological dimensions of archetypes and mythologies and how they function ideologically in contemporary politics. By synergising approaches to critical discourse studies with the work of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and other mythologists, Kelsey’s psychodiscursive approach explores the depths of the human psyche to analyse the affective qualities of storytelling. Kelsey makes a compelling case for our need to understand more about the power of mythology in modern society. Whilst mythology might be part of who we are, societies are responsible for its ideological substance and implications. Media and Affective Mythologies shows how we can begin to engage with this principle.




Staring at the Park


Book Description

Winner of the 2016 ICQI Outstanding Qualitative Book Award Acclaimed qualitative scholar Jane Speedy’s world was upended completely after suffering a severe stroke when only in her late 50s. After returning home from the hospital, Speedy took to her iPad to write and draw as a way of making sense of her experience and to aid her recovery. The stunning, fragmented, poetic text and images comprising Staring at the Park depict the events of this difficult journey. It provides an alternative model of engaging the self in a research project in an evocative and artistic way. This highly original book: -uses the seemingly ordinary motif of the park opposite the author’s house as the catalyst for a wildly creative autoethnography;-includes three narratives of the author’s experience of staring at the park—an imagined murder mystery in the park, a realist ethnography of the park, and the life story (both imagined and real) of her facing her illness and recovery; -offers readers a poetic and performative inquiry into the author’s new reality.