Ronald J. Pelias

The Creative Qualitative Researcher is designed to help readers see the range of possibilities of creative scholarship. The phrase "creative qualitative researchers" points toward scholars who call upon their literary skills to evoke the emotional and intellectual complexity of their subjects; who deploy their vulnerable, relational, and reflexive selves to expose and change problematic cultural practices; and who engage their embodied ideological and ethical sensibilities as researchers. Part I introduces chapters on four qualitative methods: autoethnography, performative writing, narrative inquiry and poetic inquiry. Each of these four method chapters presents the method written in the style it features, provides writing prompts for exploring the chapter’s themes, and offers written examples of the method. Part II, divided into four chapters, aims to develop creative qualitative research skills relevant to the methods discussed in Part I. Chapter 5 discusses empathy and ethics; Chapter 6 is a primer on creative writing; Chapter 7 identifies some alternative ideas for using the words of others; and Chapter 8 focuses on collaborative improvisation to compose scholarly work. Each of the chapters in Part II includes a large number of writing exercises, prompts and strategies to assist scholars in becoming better creative researchers. By the end of the book, readers will know what creative research might entail and will have a clear understanding of the methods. Working with the various writing strategies, readers will see the potential of creative research and gain skills for its use.

Writing That Makes Readers Want to Read

The Creative Qualitative Researcher

Lynn C. Miller

Proceedings of the Giant City Conference on Performative Writing, April 26-29, 2001

The Green Window

Lessons in Aging and Dying: A Poetic Autoethnography captures the experience of being elderly and facing the end of life. The book presents a collection of poems about life’s end accompanied with narrative commentary. Organized as 73 lessons, they can be read as personal curiosities, momentary realizations, farcical departures, embarrassing fears, therapeutic encounters, experiential truths, hopeful conjectures, and inevitable destinations. This book is a poetic inquiry that calls upon the lyrical in narrative and poetic forms to enter its subject. It also is an autoethnography that examines culture through the deployment of the self. Framed by introductory and concluding remarks, the book is organized around three developmental stages. The initial pages, "Beginnings," recognize the author’s birth into the end, a time when he knew he had arrived at a place beyond middle age. The middle unit, "From Here to There," displays an unsettled settling in, driven by an ongoing tension between resistance and acquiescence. It serves as a transitional stage into "Endings," the final section that anticipates death’s imminent arrival and speculates about how author might meet his end. Together, these units provide opportunities for identification, speculation, and resistance. Published as part of the prestigious autoethnographic series Writing Lives: Ethnographic and Autoethnographic Narratives, and written by one of the foremost academics in the fields of communication and performance studies, this text is particularly suitable for students and researchers in subjects such as relational and family communication, gerontology and end-of-life care, and performance studies.

A Poetic Autoethnography

Lessons on Aging and Dying

The Interpretation of Aesthetic Texts

Performance Studies

Writing Performance, Identity, and Everyday Life invites the reader into Ronald J. Pelias’ world of artistic and everyday performance. Calling upon a broad range of qualitative methods, these selected writings from Pelias submerge themselves in the evocative and embodied, in the material and consequential, often creating moving accounts of their topics. The book is divided into four sections: Foundational Logics, Performance, Identity, and Everyday Life. Part I addresses the methodological underpinnings of the book, focusing on the ‘touchstones’ that inform Pelias’ work: performative, autoethnographic, poetic, and narrative methods. These directions push the researcher toward empathic engagement, a leaning toward others; using the literary to evoke the cognitive and affective aspects of experience; and an ethical sensibility located in social justice. Parts II–IV focus on artistic and everyday life performances, including discussions of the disciplinary shift from the oral interpretation of literature to the field of performance studies; empathy and the actor’s process; conceptions of performance; the performance of race, gender, and sexuality; and performances in interpersonal relations and academic circles. By the end, readers will see Pelias demonstrate the power of qualitative methods to engage and to present alternative ways of being. Pelias’ work shows us how to understand and feel the evocative strength of thinking performatively.

The Selected Works of Ronald J. Pelias

Writing Performance, Identity, and Everyday Life

Education without ethics, without sentiments, without heart, is simply soulless, factual academics and nothing more. In his array of authentic essays, Ronald J. Pelias poetically evokes the spiritual aspects of life in a seemingly dispassionate field--the academy. A Methodology of the Heart presents a procession of situational compositions confronting matters such as family relationships, student/teacher communications, and general life at the university. In his comical yet candid book, Pelias depicts the emotional battle for understanding and honesty within the conventional boundaries of higher education. It introduces such subjects as autoethnography, autobiography, personal narratives, memoir, creative non-fiction, and performative writing. It is absolutely a crucial addition to all book collectors with autoethnographic or communication interests as well as to the general reader attracted to daily life and higher education.

Evoking Academic and Daily Life

A Methodology of the Heart

Colleen McKee

Keith Russell

Gaylord Brewer

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Jack Hirschman

David Meltzer

Joe Benevento

Glenn Sheldon

Michael Castro

Simon Perchik

Tunji Ajibade

Alexander Balogh

María Balogh

Jason W. Dockery

Michael Anthony Dorlac

Adrian Hein

gaye gambell-petersen

Spencer Hurst

N. Jeff Lind

Richard Luftig

Jeff Penn May

Chris Mazauskas

Jessica Moses

W.E. Mueller

Michael Rothenberg

Tabitha Russo

Gina Tabasso

Untamed Ink

If the Truth Be Told: Accounts in Literary Forms plays with the sense of truth. It is composed of six chapters, “Childhood Dangers,” “Relational Logics,” “Jesus Chronicles,” “Criminal Tales,” “Aging, Illness, and Death Lessons,” and “Telling Truths.” Each chapter includes fictional and nonfictional accounts, including poems, stories, monologues, short dramas, essays, creative nonfiction, and mixed genres, to address each chapter’s subject. Pieces are based on the author’s personal experiences, newspapers accounts, and purely fictional accounts (all revealed in an appendix at the end of the book). Moving through the book from beginning to end, readers may or may not know whether they are reading a nonfictional or fictional text. Pelias intentionally subverts assumptions readers may have in reading the different pieces in order to blur the boundaries of what counts as evidence, what might be accepted as truth, what might be of use in everyday lives. In this vein, Pelias invites readers to consider what they value and why. As an engaging compilation of literary works, this book can be read by anyone simply for pleasure. If Truth Be Told can also be used in any number of college courses in communication, creative writing, cultural studies, ethics, narrative inquiry, philosophy, psychology, sociology and qualitative inquiry. The book includes an extensive appendix with general and chapter-by-chapter discussion questions. “If the truth be told, I’d confess that I found myself in many of the stories he told; I anticipate that other readers will as well, and we’ll all be better for it. If the Truth Be Told solidifies Pelias’s standing as a wise and creative writer par excellence.” – Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida “For anyone interested in learning how to poetically and creatively capture the human experience, If the Truth be Told is a must read. Each tale richly satisfies yet whets the desire for more; the only solution is to keep reading right through to the end.”– Lesa Lockford, Bowling Green State University Ronald J. Pelias has spent his career working with the fusion of performance, literature, and qualitative methods in an ongoing search for truths that provide momentary places of rest.

Accounts in Literary Forms

If the Truth Be Told

Ronald J. Pelias is concerned with writing about performance, from the everyday performative routines to the texts on stage. He seeks to write performatively, to offer poetic or aesthetic renderings of performance events in order to capture some sense of their nature. In his quest for the spirit of theatrical performances in a collection of essays, Pelias, of course, asks more of the written word than the word can deliver. Yet the attempt is both desirable -- and necessary. To discuss performance without some accounting for its essence as art, he asserts, is at best misleading, at worst, fraud. Pelias divides his efforts to present performance events into three general categories: "Performing Every Day", "On Writing and Performing", and "Being a Witness". As the title implies, "Performing Every Day" focuses on performances ranging from the daily business of enacting roles to the telling of tales that make life meaningful. It incorporates essays about the ongoing process of presenting oneself in everyday life; the gender script that insists that men enact manly performances; the classroom performances of teachers and students; stories of gender, class, and race that mark identity; and a performance installation entitled "A Day's Talk", which is a record of talk produced in a day's time accompanied by reflections about and responses to that talk. "On Writing and Performing" examines the written script and performance practices. It contains a description of a struggle between a writer and a performer as they protect their own interests; an intimate look at an apprehensive performer; a short play entitled "The Audition", which deals with what it means to be an actor; a chronicle ofperformance process from the perspective of an actor; and a brief essay on the nature of performance. "Being a Witness" examines performance from the perspective of the audience and the director. It includes essays on the experience of being an audience member; viewing theatre in the context of New York City; directing and being directed by actors' bodies; watching The DEF Comedy Jam; and, in the form of an interview, some final reflections about working with performance for many years.

Poeticizing the Researcher's Body

Writing Performance

Ronald J. Pelias

Books

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