Workshops provide pedagogical spaces for both formal and informal education and conversation.
The pre-conference workshops at ICAE and symposia have become an important way we build, nurture and encourage our community. Details below. To participate download and complete the registration form on the registration page, links for the online conference will be sent ahead of the workshops.
Workshop One
Take a Deep Breath
with Gayle Letherby
Take a Deep Breath…. A creative writing workshop for academics, activists and anyone who wants to explore and/or play with different ways of storytelling
‘Breathing is the greatest pleasure in life.’ Robin Sharma
In addition to being perhaps the most significant embodied experience that all animals – human and other – engage in, references to the act(ions) of breathing imply not only other experiences but also other actions and emotional responses. When might we encourage someone to ‘catch’, ‘hold’ or ‘save’ their breath? What leads us to describe a view as ‘breath taking’ or anticipate a meeting or an event with ‘bated breath’? In this workshop we will explore, through memoir, creative non-fiction, fiction, poetry and other forms of creative writing breathing as both an essential activity and a metaphor for all manner of being.
Within the workshop we will engage with autoethnographic experiences and materials including personal issues and imaginings; research data, pedagogic reflections, emotional, practical, theoretical and P/political concerns and actions. Similar workshops have taken place at previous International Autoethnography conferences and this will be the sixth creative writing workshop. Although some of the writing and editing tasks will be similar the substantive foci and some of the exercises will be different. If you enjoyed previous workshops please come again. If you are new to this way of writing, of working, of creating, please be reassured that others find it enjoyable and enriching. All you need to bring is a paper and pen/tablet/computer and your personal and political imagination.
Workshop Two
Autoethnography & Ethics; Negotiating Points of Tension
With Kitrina Douglas & Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira
Over the past twenty years those who practice autoethnography have witnessed a change in how we approach ethics. No longer is the conversation simply about whose story is being shared, and who might be implicated by the telling. Questions and concerns range from how we maintain the anonymity of others in our stories to considering the potential harm we do to ourselves sharing one’s experiences. These are mitigated alongside harms experienced by not telling, accountability, care, procedural ethics, situational ethics, relational ethics (to name but a few). Our aim in this workshop is to briefly outline the main issues for ethics committees and explore how researchers might negotiate these. It is not our intention to generate foundational guidelines as some others have done but rather recognize the unique challenges that arise in specific research and consider some ways we might negotiate these.
Bring your insights, experiences and questions on this topic to share with the group.
Workshop 3:
Telling Truths
with Tony Adams
In this two-part workshop, we will explore what “truth” can mean in our writing, research, and creative work.
Part One will emphasize how truth matters in the gathering and representation of personal experience. We will discuss historical and narrative truth, accuracy, and the tenuous intersection of fact and fiction.
Part Two will emphasize techniques we can use to tell our truths, ones that, if shared publicly, might generate harm to ourselves or others. We will discuss how this harm can happen, and how to use fabrication, composite characters, varying authorship, and pseudonyms to avoid such harm.
Time will be reserved for interaction and application