What We Do When We Do Life Writing: Methodologies for Auto/Biography Now

This book began before we two editors met: in conversations at International Auto/Biography Association conferences throughout the 2000s, but perhaps most urgently during the 2012 IABA conference “Framing Lives” in Canberra, in discussions during and after the conference. It seemed everyone was talking about method but was unsure about how or where this conversation might progress. Reflections on methodology were ever-present in informal discussions, conference papers, and published work in the field. There was a clear sense that our methods were diverse, interdisciplinary, creative, and agile. But to this point, there had been no extended work on methods for auto/biographical research. Though auto/biographical research shared many methods with its (arguably) primary parent, English literary studies, when it comes to methods, auto/biography has grown, even rebelled, from its disciplinary origins.