Education without ethics, without sentiments, without heart, is simply soulless, factual academics and nothing more. In his array of authentic essays, Ronald J. Pelias poetically evokes the spiritual aspects of life in a seemingly dispassionate field—the academy. A Methodology of the Heart presents a procession of situational compositions confronting matters such as family relationships, student/teacher communications, and general life at the university. In his comical yet candid book, Pelias depicts the emotional battle for understanding and honesty within the conventional boundaries of higher education. It introduces such subjects as autoethnography, autobiography, personal narratives, memoir, creative non-fiction, and performative writing. It is absolutely a crucial addition to all book collectors with autoethnographic or communication interests as well as to the general reader attracted to daily life and higher education.
Ronald J. Pelias is a professor of speech communication at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is the author of Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcher's Body and Performance Studies: The Interpretation of Aesthetic Texts.
1 CHAPTER 1: The Heart's Introduction2 CHAPTER 2: A Personal Ecology3 CHAPTER 3: The Body's Complaint4 CHAPTER 4: Speech and the Body's Presence5 CHAPTER 5: Mirror Mirror6 CHAPTER 6: Remembering Vietnam7 CHAPTER 7: For Father and Son: An Ethnodrama with No Catharsis8 CHAPTER 8: The Poet's Self: Making Someone9 CHAPTER 9: Friends and Lovers10 CHAPTER 10: Always Dying: Living Between Da and Fort11 CHAPTER 11: The Academic: An Ethnographic Case Study12 CHAPTER 12: The Critical Life13 CHAPTER 13: Playing the Field with Elyse Pineau14 CHAPTER 14: Making Lists: Life at the University15 CHAPTER 15: The Academic Tourist: A Critical Ethnography16 CHAPTER 16: Schooling in Classroom Politics17 CHAPTER 17: What the Heart Learns18 Index19 About the Author