Body, Paper, Stage: Writing and Performing Autoethnography

Tami Spry provides a methodological introduction to the budding field of performative autoethnography. She intertwines three necessary elements comprising the process. First one must understand the body - navigating concepts of self, culture, language, class, race, gender, and physicality. The second task is to put that body on the page, assigning words for that body's sociocultural experiences. Finally, this merger of body and paper is lifted up to the stage, crafting a persona as a method of personal inquiry. These three stages are simultaneous and interdependent, and only in cultivating all three does performance autoethnography begin to take shape. Replete with examples and exercises, this is an important introductory work for autoethnographers and performance artists alike.

Tami Spry is a Professor of Performance Studies in the Communication Studies Department at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, USA. She employs autoethnographic writing and performance as a critical method of inquiry into culture and communication, teaching courses in beginning and advanced performative autoethnography, performance of literature, and collaborative writing in performance. Dr. Spry's performance work, publications, directing, and pedagogy focus on the development of cultural critique that engenders dialogue about difficult sociocultural issues; specifically, her work engages issues of race, sexual assault, grief, shamanism, and mental illness. Dr. Spry has presented performance research across the country and abroad, most recently in the UK at the University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, and University of Oxford. She also teaches abroad in Alnwick, England, and has conducted ethnographic work in Chile and Peru with Mapuche and Peruvian shaman on the performative dimensions of healing rituals. Dr. Spry's publications appear in Text and Performance Quarterly, Critical Studies Critical Methodologies, Qualitative Inquiry, International Review of Qualitative Research, Women and Language, the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, and various anthologies. Her latest performance, Call It Swing, embodies jazz as a critical method of inquiry.