AL EVANGELISTA, KG HUTCHINS, AND KATHLEEN RAGON Bringing Autoethnography to Undergraduates An Interdisciplinary Course-Cluster and Lab at Oberlin College and Conservatory ABSTRACT The label “autoethnography” has been applied to a wide range of knowledge-producing practices, from what might be considered “normal” science to narrative-driven writing to performance. These debates highlight some of the most fundamental tensions about legitimate ways of knowing/ knowledge production in the contemporary world. Further, one strength of autoethnography as a method lies in situating personal experience within broader political, social, and cultural events, which can create new opportunities in academia for voices often silenced. With these elements of autoethnography in mind, and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors founded an interdisciplinary autoethnography course cluster and lab at Oberlin College and Conservatory. In this essay, we describe the course cluster, lab, and successes and challenges of each. We also discuss the strategies and innovations of introducing undergraduate students to autoethnography. We hope that our model will be instructive for colleagues with similar goals at their institutions. Through the cross-course workshops and collaborative exercises of the autoethnography lab, our students had the opportunity to use autoethnography not just to analyze their communities but also to build a community of practice. KEYWORDS autoethnography, course cluster, teaching autoethnography, interdisciplinary learning and teaching, more-than-human relations INTRODUCTION AE: In my office there is an air filter. A white cylinder shaped like a coffee cup with tiny holes dotting the side. It was my first pandemic-specific purchase when COVID-19 continued and continues. I usually find these types of appliances extravagant, but this air filter helped slightly mitigate the never-ending middle of the pandemic. I found myself talking to students about the rare things that made us feel safer or braver in this new reality, and we kept returning to conversations about physical choreographies, the order of and ways we moved and thought, due to the pandemic. Who knew we touched our faces so much? The physical distance between us and the strangers next to us had never felt so charged. What communities did we find ourselves drifting toward when the disproportionate effects of the pandemic made themselves clear? I started to facilitate reflections on our personal experiences in order to help us process our new every day. Qualitative researcher Wafa Said Mosleh articulates this as an “abductive experience.” 1 The abductive experience is an autoethnographic mode of inquiry in which individual life events are detailed and examined with curiosity and care. These abductive experiences provide both an individual reflection but also, more importantly, context and connection to a broader community experience. For example, through our abductive experience class reflections and discussions, my students and I returned to the oft-repeated phrase, 236 Journal of Autoethnography, Vol. 4 , Issue 2 , pp. 236 –254 , e-ISSN 2637 -5192  2023 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10 .1525 /joae.2023 .4 .2 .236 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/joae/article-pdf/4/2/236/778109/joae.2023.4.2.236.pdf by Pennsylvania State University user on 23 August 2023