International Congress Of Qualitative Inquiry Research Articles

Relationality as Relationalities and a Model of Human (and Other) Justice Through Qualitative Inquiry

Based on the most recent meeting of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (2023), it is clear that using theories of relationality to situate our work is on the rise. Given this growing interest in relationality, I attempt to describe several philosophical approaches to relationality, explain how relationality is not simply a theory but an ontic stance, and consider relational theory’s implications for social justice. Regardless of the varieties of relationality that exist (be they ancient, current, Eastern, or Indigenous), research adopting a relational stance is antithetical to the world in which we find ourselves today: in brief, well-populated with (substantialist) sentiments that would seek to divide and isolate individuals, rather than show our inherent connectivity. Qualitative work is in a position to tease out the nuanced, multifaceted, and shared relationships that, by relationality’s standards, are our ontic foundations. I close with the idea that qualitative work may be pedagogical in its ability to spread these sentiments not only to fellow researchers, but to participants in this work as well.

How Can Critique of Critique Create Possibilities for Critical Qualitative Inquiry?

This commentary is based on a presentation given at the annual meeting of the Coalition for Critical Qualitative Research at the 19th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. The focus of the presentation was to address the theme: “ What are your conceptualisations of reactions to critique of critiques, and possibilities for, critical qualitative inquiry?” The aim was to prompt the participants to critically reflect on the idea of critique, and critiques of such critique.

Becomings-With Critical Qualitative Inquiry

This special issue was initiated using ideas and content from the 2023 all-day discussion at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) relating critical qualitative inquiry (CQI) and contemporary issues of social, environmental, and other forms of justice. Definitions and multiple possibilities for CQI were explored. What is CQI? What does it mean for qualitative research? Critique? (Re)Conceptualization? To provide the reader with a feel for the complexity of issues and content discussed along with research initiated through these discussions, the remainder of this introductory article provides (1) a brief history of critical qualitative work, (2) an overview of the critical content introduced in the 2023 all-day session, and (3) a description of the new critical work recently conducted by participants who joined the discussions.

Lessons on Keeping Spry

Initially presented at the 2023 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, this essay is a dedication to Tami Spry. Drawing on memory, personal encounters, and Spry’s scholarship, I share two lessons sprouted from our co-presence to each other and commitment to auto/ethnography. Ultimately, this essay honors Spry for her work, spirit, and steward on being responsible to hearts and humanity.

The white light vibrations of Norman K. Denzin

With Norman K. Denzin’s death on 6 August 2023, the global community of qualitative researchers lost a visionary scholar and vocal crusader in broad areas of critical and interpretivist theory, pedagogy, and practice. His pioneering work included contributions to symbolic interactionism, symbiotics, performance studies, autoethnography, and narrative performance to name a few. Founder of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) and several prominent journals devoted to critical scholarship, he also coauthored the influential Sage handbooks on qualitative research. His impact was titanic. This article examines his influence in one discrete area of journal editorship. However, it also draws broader conclusions about his enormous contributions including: his panache for bold action in the face of paralyzing situations, his efforts to create safe and respected academic spaces for other scholars, his leadership in challenging normative academic culture, his deep-seated belief in the transformational power of qualitative inquiry, and his ever-evident moral compass set on enacting inclusive, compassionate, and socially just communities. A tireless crusader for a more utopian society, his white light vibrations will continue to provide a source of energy for those looking to perform a better version of humanity.

Pursuing, Practicing, and Portraying Qualitative Research: An Interview With Norman K. Denzin

At the Second International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (May 2006), the authors, then graduate students, interviewed Norman Denzin for Carolyn Ellis’s Advanced Qualitative Methods graduate course at the University of South Florida. Only a few parts of the interview had ever been published. The authors include the transcript of the interview here.

A Jazz Aesthetic Reprise (on the Work of Tami Spry)

This performative piece serves as a tribute to Tami L. Spry upon her retirement from academic teaching. The piece is considered a reprise because it is based on a shortened version given on a panel at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (2016) that celebrated the publication of her book, Autoethnography and the Other: Unsettling Power through Utopian Performatives. A variation of this piece was presented at the 2022 National Communication Association Convention in New Orleans on the panel: “The Place of Performance and the Performance of Tami L. Spry.” The piece infuses citations in building an incomplete bibliography of her body of work. And like her body of work, this tribute text is a performance script.

There Was an Old Woman Who . . . Lost Patience With the Academy and Performed Her Frustration at a Public Meeting

Taking as its starting point the nursery rhyme about the old woman who swallowed a fly, this autoethnographic performance text presents a fable of an old woman who first becomes invisible and then realizes that she can reclaim her power, but only once she rids herself of all the “rubbish” she has consumed. The text adopts the traditional format of a play script and references core themes of critical performance studies—gender, power, the body, presence, and meaning. Preserving the integrity of the play script as a literary form, there are no references; however, readers will recognize the implicit theoretical moves in the text. Readers may also note the inevitable challenge of translating the body-in-performance from stage to page. The text was performed by the author for a panel conceived and convened by Bryant Alexander, for the 19th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

‘I don’t know why she swallowed the fly’: On Dubious Cures and Drastic Measures in Post (?) Pandemic Times (An Introduction to the Special Issue)

This piece serves as introduction for the Special Issue: “‘ I don’t know why she swallowed the fly’: On Dubious Cures and Drastic Measures in Post (?) Pandemic Times.” A panel presented at the 2023 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. Each of 10 performative and poetic essays respond to the prompt and speak to issues of agism, sexism, gender-bias, homophobia, violence, pharmaceutical consumption, medical industry bias, the social construction and consumption of lies, and the potentials of utopian dreams as strategies of intervention.

Higher Education in the Time of Trump and Beyond: Resistance and Critique

The current Qualitative Inquiry partial special issue titled “Higher Education in the Time of Trump and Beyond: Resistance and Critique” is based on a similarly themed plenary panel that was to take place at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in 2020. Alas, like so many other events, it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Editor’s Introduction

Introduction| September 01 2022 Editor’s Introduction: Dis/Comfort and Liminal Negotiations Kakali Bhattacharya Kakali Bhattacharya Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya is a multiple award-winning professor at the University of Florida housed in the Research, Evaluation, and Methodology program. She is the 2022 recipient of the inaugural Egon G. Guba Award for Outstanding Contributions to Qualitative Research from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Qualitative Research Special Interest Group. She is also the 2018 winner of AERA’s Scholars of Color Mid-Career Contribution Award. Her co-authored text with Norman Kent Gillen, Power, Race, and Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative, received a 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from AERA (SIG 168) and a 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (2022) 11 (3): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2022.11.3.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kakali Bhattacharya; Editor’s Introduction: Dis/Comfort and Liminal Negotiations. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1 September 2022; 11 (3): 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2022.11.3.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentDepartures in Critical Qualitative Research Search The world has been confronted by a global pandemic for more than two years, exacerbated by multiple other preexisting, interconnected, structural, and sociocultural inequities and oppression. These conditions have created or exaggerated liminal existence, in which our presence in numerous middle/third spaces illuminates complex negotiations. These liminal spaces are transnational, marked by being here and there, by the blurring of home and work, and by creating hybridized spaces of living and working. They are among the many spaces of in-betweenness that have been identified, exposed, made visible, or thrust into hyper-awareness by the pandemic and other structures of inequity. For some, these liminal spaces of existence intersecting with multiple structures of oppression have been an ever-present reality. Yet an intentional focus on this reality to disrupt the normalization of such oppression creates various experiences of dis/comfort. Experiences of dis/comfort exist in the liminal spaces between comfort and discomfort. This hybridized... You do not currently have access to this content.

“Masking/Truth: Transformative Visions and Utopias of Hope” (An Introduction)

This short piece serves as introduction to the Special Issue of a triple panel at the 2022 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), entitled “Masking/Truth.”

“Pivoting Between the Past/Present and Towards the Future/perfect of Autoethnography”

Following the guide of the Autoethnography Special Interest Group preconference at the 2021 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), this short think piece was placed on the closing panel. The charge was to “speculate on autoethnographic futures.” This contribution uses the notion of national and international pivoting due to the Covid pandemic in practical everyday engagements to theorize on the notion of “the new normal,” not only reduced to conditions of pandemic but political and civic unrest linked with a range of identities to push commitments to social justice. The piece engages a provocation of autoethnographic futurity that is not just about standing in the present reflecting on the past, but a call for civic action for future (queer) worldmaking.

Review: Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories, by Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis

Review: <i>Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories</i>, by Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis

Researching With Poetic and Artistic Dispositifs

This article presents the experience of the workshop Investigar con dispositivos artísticos y poéticos (Researching with poetic and artistic dispositifs), carried out in the special interest group A Day in Spanish and Portuguese (ADISP), in the frame of the Fifteenth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), in 2019. The goal of this workshop was to show the panorama of the uses and implications of the arts, poetry, and narratives as a methodological strategy in qualitative research. The theoretical framework to development the workshop included the poetic inquiry approach and the artistic dispositif. The experience of the workshop shows the social, political, and critical impact of combining art and poetry. This combination allows researchers to go beyond more traditional research practices such as interviews and ethnographies. We hope to contribute to promote these alternative methodologies in the Latin American researchers’ communities and audiences.

Bad-Alys and the Bad-Folx: Edge-Dwelling, Hope and How to Get Your Voice Heard

I attended a symposium on “Bad Girls” at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) 2018, looking for inspiration on how to make sense of myself and academia. When I asked, “How can I be a Bad Girl now?” I was told to go and get a job and get published. This autoethnographic piece shares stories of Bad-Alys, an Early Career Researcher trying to get published and finding her place as an academic. This paper was written to inspire the potentiality of change by exploring the concept of multiple selves from Etherington and Speedy, moving away from a binary to position Bad-Folx alongside Barad’s concept of entanglement; as activists and edge-dwellers within qualitative research. This is a paper of hope, offering ways to move-with the current-accepted paradigm of the academy by taking control of your doings as Ahmed would argue, through vignettes of collaborative inquiry, re-envisioning the use of conference spaces and self-publishing.

A Collaboration: Connected to, Constituted by, and Comfort in the Other

This essay explores our collaborative work as connective, constitutive, and comforting. Calling upon the poetic and performative, we describe our relational dynamic as a loving presence that comes together for the gifts of our collaborations. The essay ends with a reflection on our presentation at the 14th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry after Tami Spry stood in for Lesa Lockford when Lesa was unable to attend.

“I Thought I Knew You, Two”: A Performative Response to Norman Denzin and Tami Spry’s Wild West Show at ICQI 2018

For the 2018 Autoethnography Special Interest Group at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), Norman Denzin and Tami Spry did an integrative co-performance of each other’s autoethnography linked with a western motif. Each of the originating pieces of their performance texts were pre-published in Special Issues edited by this author. The author of this piece was invited to engage a performative response to the performance, and ostensibly entered the textual and embodied performance as a third companion on a western journey discovering new insights of both presenters in the performance of each as the other. 1

Much Louder Than I Am: A Musical Collaborative Autoethnography

One challenge of performative research is that a performance is a one-time unique event. It cannot be preserved or returned to in its own form. Here, we offer a more durable artifact to preserve some aspects of the collaborative performance autoethnography we performed at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) in 2018. We write to communicate not only what we performed during the session but also our sentiments concerning singing and playing music as autoethnography. Because so often in our work we use songs, songwriting, music, and performance; we propose rhythm, melody, and harmony as alternative acts of autoethnographic collaboration. In this way of doing autoethnography, it may be that no words are spoken. But the burden of work is shared. This is the kind of collaboration we seek … in the here and now.

What is Feminism in Troubling Times? To Stay Standing Together

This performative piece, an enactment of lived feminism, acknowledges the privileges and explores the similarities and differences between three cis-gendered white women in different parts of the United Kingdom and how these aid and hinder collaboratively writing together. The piece was shared at the Autoethnography Special Interest Group at International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) in 2018. We had never written together before but had presented on the same Shame? panel at ICQI in 2017 convened by Alys Mendus that also included papers by Stacy Holman Jones and Anne Harris and a memorial to Sue Porter. There were similarities in terms of themes explored including sexuality and taboo. This was our starting point but it was not easy. We realized that difficulty within collaborative inquiry is rarely written about and published but is often the topic of conversation between academics. Perhaps feminism is our ability to stand together curious and alive to our nonshared experience with a commitment to not creating a shared perspective? To stay standing together, we could be stronger in these troubling times.