Books from the ICQI conference

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It's been a long hiatus from blogging, but that's what the end of the semester will do to you.

A week ago I was at the ICQI conference in Champaign, Illinois (what fun!) and as my annual treat I picked up an armload of new books.  I feel strange carting off this much paper in this age of online communications.  I am not sure how much longer this tradition will continue.  I may find myself 'beaming down' the latest book into my I-Phone or some other device.  But for now I have this nice pile of fresh pages.

Here are my choices:

Erotic Mentoring:  Women's Transformations in the University by Janice Hocker Rushing (Left Coast Press).  This is the one I've started to read.  I like her invitational style (which she attributes to encounters with Ellis and like-minded qualitative researchers).  I was particularly interested in this book because of the possible connections to my own journal study.  There is a strong Jungian perspective here, something I haven't run into for a while. 

Autoethnography as Method by Heewon Chang (Left Coast Press).  I was very curious to see how a qualitative research methodology text would be translated through the eyes of autoethnography.  I also met Heewon at the conference--she was sitting near me in the session on coding organized by Ray Maietta--and it was then that I realized she was one of the winners of the first QSR teaching grant.  Now I am curious to talk with her more about the ways she is using NVivo with autoethnographic content.  You can do it, of course, but for the technophobic, technology is often frowned upon with more humanistic content or approaches.  Heewon--I will be calling! 


Guyana Diaries: Women's lives across difference by Kimberly Nettles (Left Coast Press).  I thought this book would be an interesting opportunity to read a real ethnography--not another methodology book--not that I distain methodology books.  In keeping with my journal project, it seemed like this would be a place to encounter some good feminist theory.  Nettles describes her studies of The Red Thread Development Corporation, a woman-run activist organization. 

Poetry as Method:  Reporting Research Through Verse by Sandra Faulkner (Left Coast Press) couldn't help but catch my eye.  Faulkner not only talks about representing research in poetry but also explores the ways poets processes parallel/intersect with similar processes of researchers.  She also provides guidelines for evaluating research poetry. 

Finally, I've been searching for a book(s) that would be helpful for moving students into doing online research, and that's why I came home with Janet Salmons Online Interviews In Real Time (Sage).  I looked at several other books on related topics, many with a more comprehensive approach but Salmons seemed the most engaging.  It is very hard to buy books about new technologies because once the book appears, you know the technology has moved on.  It looked like it offered advice that could hold with a range of technological changes. 

It's summer, so back to blogging!