Chapter 10: Dialogical Narrative: A Theoretical Model for Inquiry and Sense Making

This paper examines of the use of dialogical narrative, a form of reflexive writing, as a methodological tool for inquiry and sense making. Though the paper uses selected writings of my experiences with race in the academy, the paper it is not intended to directly contribute to the literature on race in higher education. Instead, the purpose of this paper is to display prominent features of dialogical narrative and the usefulness of this form of writing for unpacking, interrogating, and cohering complex personal experiences. To this end, I use my own writings to illustrate the utility of dialogical narrative as a method of autoethnographic inquiry and sense making. I conclude that the systematic use of this method of inquiry is a potentially powerful tool for developing and transforming understanding for virtually any set of complex experiences.