Life Writing and Literary Métissage as an Ethos for Our Times

The Authors: Erika Hasebe-Ludt is an associate professor of teacher education in the Faculty of Education at The University of Lethbridge. She teaches and researches in the areas of language and literacy, and curriculum studies. In addition to various articles in edited books and journals, she is the co-editor (with Wanda Hurren) of Curriculum Intertext: Place/Language/Pedagogy. Together with Cynthia Chambers, Carl Leggo and other researchers, she is investigating life writing as one of the new literacies in Canadian cosmopolitan schools.Cynthia Chambers is a professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Lethbridge. She teaches and researches in curriculum studies, language and literacy, and indigenous studies. Her essays, memoir and stories have been published in edited collections and various periodicals. As well as the research on life writing, she works collaboratively with indigenous communities on literacies of place, human relations and the material world.Carl Leggo is a poet and professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. He teaches courses in English education, writing, and narrative inquiry. Carl Leggo’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been published in many journals. He is the author of several books including: Growing Up Perpendicular on the Side of a Hill, View from My Mother’s House, Come-By-Chance, and Teaching to Wonder: Responding to Poetry in the Secondary Classroom. Also, he is a co-editor of Being with A/r/tography (with Stephanie Springgay, Rita L. Irwin, and Peter Gouzouasis), and of Creative Expression, Creative Education (with Robert Kelly).

«This is a work of stunning brilliance and immense beauty. It should serve as a standard for the various genres of autobiography, story, and life-writing. By providing scholarly contextualizations of those fields while offering carefully crafted examples of writing in action, the authors have revealed how a courageous attending to the details of our lives deeply enriches our understanding of life. By the end, I could only sit in silence, full of wonder, strangely at peace. It was the feeling that something really important had been accomplished that showed us the world in a manner of rare depth.» (David Geoffrey Smith, Professor of Education, University of Alberta)«‘Life Writing and Literary Métissage as an Ethos for Our Times’ is a pioneering text, one that offers the field of curriculum studies, in particular, and the field of education, in general, an innovative methodology as well as an impassioned and beautifully drawn argument for both the doing and the teaching of autobiographical and life writing studies that attend to their potentials as both political and redemptive practices. … the ‘Braids’ of this text, as narrated, juxtaposed and interwoven, not only describe ‘experiences’ of these three authors, but also become means by which to interpret, to interrupt, to re-assemble, to question anew those very experiences. In developing and performing this creative strategy for weaving together socio-historical conditions of difference as well as points of relation, cross- and inter-sections, and action, Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, and Leggo challenge as well as inspire curriculum scholars not only to engage in such autobiographical and life writing pedagogies and practices, but also to research the effects of such writing and theorizing on ourselves as teachers, researchers, and writers.» (Janet L. Miller, Professor, Department of Arts and Humanities, Teachers College, Columbia University)