Autoethnography as Self-portrait: An Autoethnographic Analysis of Trauma-Sensemaking through Art

This project thesis is centered around coping with early onset childhood trauma through an autoethnography of narrative and art creation. The goal of this project is to understand more deeply how the art making process synthesizes or disrupts trauma sense-making through the introspective lens of the artist as scholar. The project consists of an interactive art exhibit and this written scholarly analysis of the creation and display of this exhibit. This includes an introduction to my life as a trauma survivor and Greek-American woman, informed by communication scholarship and other relevant fields regarding narrative theory, Greek history, religious and trauma studies. Within the socially constructed “life-world,” the epistemological assumptions of subjective-narrative research focus on the interpretations of lived experience, not to produce generalizable knowledge (Kvale, 1996). Because trauma-sensemaking is both analytical and symbolic, inspired by previous autoethnographic scholarship, this project is written in both a creative and academic voice (Fink, 2022). In addition, the project thesis discusses relevant extant literature surrounding autoethnographic methods and artistic practice and outlines the plans and outcomes of my art exhibit and the design of the autoethnography, including a description of the art-making plan and a discussion of the various art media involved in the project, such as creative writing and painting