Autoethnography as a Critical Methodology: Voice and Resistance

Date: Monday, March 23
Time: 4–6 pm
Location: Fireplace Room, University Club, 101 Administration Pl., Saskatoon

Free and open to the public I Refreshments to follow

About this event

Speaker: Dr. Genevieve Fuji Johnson (PhD), Professor of Political Science, Simon Fraser University

Drawing from my Japanese-Canadian family’s stories of anti-Asian racism in the lead up to, during, and after the Second World War, I explore autoethnography as a critical methodology for policy studies and political science. Reflecting on my family’s experiences of dispossession, displacement, and incarceration, while also examining literatures on critical race theory and critical autoethnography, I develop several methodological principles that may help to advance nuanced knowledge about everyday racism in political life. Although centering one’s own experiences and insights, critical autoethnography can widen and deepen a basis for empathy with others. This other-regarding potentiality can be a bridge that enable researchers using this methodology to critique policies that may affect them directly or not. In other words, autoethnography’s centering of oneself creates a connection to others that can result in a detailed understanding of what may be oppressive political practices, policies, and institutions and of how best to end this oppression.

About the Timlin Lecture

Sponsored by the Timlin Trust, this series of annual lectures was established in honour of Mabel Frances Timlin (1891–1976) and is alternately hosted by the Department of Economics and Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.

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