I offer an autoethnographic exploration of my experience with the culture of a marriage and family therapist (MFT) in training. As a beginning therapist I assumed that success would be determined primarily by how well I mastered different theoretical models. This belief shifted during an instance in which I was planning to begin differentiating…

The power of black women's personal narratives emerging out of nineteenth-century America rested in their sociopolitical as well as in their literary contributions. These slave narratives and autobiographical texts, however, were either ignored, sentimentalized, or reduced in scope as addenda to the abolitionist-inspired texts produced by black…

Using an autobiographical approach for pedagogical reflection, the author raises questions about how to include "hospitable kinship" and "gift exchange" in teaching and learning. Her experience with a Zimbabwean community circle of hospitable kinship has prompted her to consider how this method of community formation might be…

The central thesis in this essay is the need to get more "personal" and more "political" in our thinking and especially our teaching about interculturality. Offering a "radical" critique of the agenda of conventional Intercultural Communication scholarship, I draw my inspiration from the conceptual and philosophical roots of the field, while also…

In 1980, on behalf of the Gros Ventre people, George P. Horse Capture published "The Seven Visions of Bull Lodge, as Told by His Daughter, Garter Snake." "The Seven Visions" describes a lifetime of personal encounters with Powerful other-than-human Persons by the noted Gros Ventre warrior and ritual leader, Bull Lodge (ca.…

On the first day of English composition, students unleash a torrent of reasons why writing scared them as they write their opening day personal autobiographies. Most comments focus on reasons that have little to do with the craft or complexities of great writing. Numerous students bemoan their use of "substandard" English, thinking that their ways…

"Voice" has become a dangerous term. It has tended to imply romanticism, expressionism, and individualism--dangerous things. There are, however, two safe or prudent thoughts that can be expressed about voice and writing and four dangerous or adventuresome thoughts. The first point is that the choice between the use of terms such as text…

In "The Uses of Diversity," the interpretive anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, says that it is impossible to completely get inside the point of view of another culture. Geertz contends, however, that despite multiple voices in the growing body of reflexive ethnographies there is still an author composing the work. Besides Geertz,…

Over the years many different psychologists and psychoanalysts have found value in the concept of the self-narrative, or the "life story." Narrative thought demands an appreciation of the particulars of time and place and a focus on multidimensional understanding of events, people, emotion, and motivation. By using the life story or…

A hypertext entitled "Reading the Map" comes from the exploration of an individual's own life. Observations, experiences, whatever comes to mind, become part of the text. This constant addition of information adds physically to the text, making a perceived move outward into the social. However, this additional information actually moves…

A study examined what factors made content area literacy learners have positive or negative attitudes toward reading at various stages and what sociocultural dimensions influenced positive or negative attitudes toward reading. Subjects, 35 Hawaii students and 18 mainland students, completed an autobiography assignment as part of a required content…

Two composition instructors assigned literacy autobiographies to their students, in the same way the instructors had received such assignments when they were students in a graduate seminar on literacy. One instructor taught at the University of Minnesota's General College (an open admission college), and the other instructor taught in the…

This autobiographical paper describes the teaching of an adjunct faculty member at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, and the doctoral and postdoctoral students he taught. The paper discusses the author's study of the area of biography and autobiography; the use of ethnography, history, and biography in qualitative research; the…

Unlike less skilled writers, who are intensely writer-oriented, skilled writers of personal essays and autobiographies are reader-oriented and demonstrate a conscious concern for their external audience. Student writers can develop a sense of an external audience by analyzing parallel autobiographical text selections of skilled and unskilled…

One theoretical approach to self-awareness is the study of introspective writing. Among the characteristics of intrapersonal communication that can be explored through memoirs and journals are selective memory and chronology revision. From the reflections of writers like Lillian Hellman, Dag Hammarskjold, and May Sarton comes confirmation that…