We focused on the closetable identities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered queer (LGBTQ) Jewish Americans through the use of identity narratives. Thirty-one people participated in narrative interviews about their identity negotiation decisions. The Communication Theory of Identity framed the inquiry by showing how the interpenetrations of identity layers and critical elements created changes and conflict in participants’ lives that necessitated negotiating their LGBTQ Jewish identity. Analyses revealed conflicts related to self-perception, experiences, perceptions of others, and enactments of being LGBTQ and Jewish, many of which revolved around issues of alienation. The potential for identity gaps to emerge and produce largely negative outcomes was ever present in their lives as they sought supportive communities for one or both identity elements. This study has implications for individual and community support of multiple and stigmatized identities.

In this autoethnographic essay, the author argues for the use of poetic inquiry as a feminist methodology by showing her use of poetry as research method during the past 13 years. Through examples of her poetic inquiry work, the author details how poetry as research offers Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies scholars a means of doing, showing, and teaching embodiment and reflexivity, a way to refuse the mind-body dialectic, a form of feminist ethnography, and a catalyst for social agitation and change. The author uses examples of her ethnographic poetry that critique middle-class White motherhood, address the problems of White feminism, and reflects the nuances of identity negotiation in research and personal life to show the breadth of topics and approaches of poetic inquiry as feminist research practice and feminist pedagogy.

Using Feminist Participatory Action Research, graduate and undergraduate students at a midsized, midwestern public university collaborated with investigators on welcoming and inclusive practices in the classroom through focus-group discussions. The research team conducted six focus-group sessions with 39 students from marginalized communities about how instructors can include and center marginalized and intersecting identities based on age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ability, and socioeconomic status in face-to-face and online classrooms. Discussions centered around instructor behavior and characteristics, what instructors did before and during class interactions, and the teaching materials they created that led to feelings of being welcomed and included. The relationship between students and instructors was paramount, and instructors who used more immediate and supportive communication behaviors were seen as more welcoming and inclusive. A welcoming and inclusive classroom means centering student experiences, identities, and concerns, being a reflexive and responsive instructor, and focusing on the interpersonal relationship between instructor and students. We discuss our findings and suggest best practices for inclusive pedagogy.

The author presents a personal narrative on marriage and poetic inquiry to show how arts-based research (ABR), ethnographic, and narrative research methods can realize the potential of critical work to critique, expand, and alter dominant discourse that circumscribes family communication research and praxis. Faulkner uses the personal narrative, TEN, to show how critical family communication research can be done and make an argument for ABR in ethnographic and narrative forms as useful for studying identity, subjugated perspectives, and difficult experiences not easily talked about.

The author presents ars criteria (the art of criteria) poems as a re-entry into the dialogue about rigor and quality in qualitative research using arts-based research, and poetry in particular. This piece uses found poetry to address questions of critical rigor and vigorous application of criteria in qualitative research. She argues that we need to continue to dialogue about applying criteria with rigor or adopting vigorous criteria and believes that “flexible criteria” exist and should be used when evaluating poetic inquiry.

Through personal narrative, the author shows the experience of new motherhood by juxtaposing a social science relationship researcher role with middle-class cultural expectations of mothers. Autoethnographic scenes of the exhaustion of juggling expanding roles and cultural advice about what being a good mommy means with anxiety about being a bad mother help the author question (spank) entrenched mommy myths. The author uses poetic inquiry and personal narrative as forms to acknowledge, examine, and potentially alter the complex reality that although a mom might like and love her child, she might be anxious and abhor the prescribed role of being mommy.