Track 2

Track 2

Abstract: Familial relationships, or lack thereof, are replayed through musical texts as the author reflects on her experience revealing her father’s alcoholism in previous autoethnographic research. Song lyrics are used as exploration and textual evidence to resituate the author in the experiences of her academic journey, and the same songs are used as means of coping with her father’s addiction. Research, the self, the PhD experience, popular culture, and music are brought together in a dialogue that casts up the idea of communication as culture into a reflexive hybrid in which the questions and answers can both be found in different facets of the popular cultural text. Using artist Adele’s single, “Hello” as a central strand, personal narrative is intertwined with a record-breaking musical hit, as the reader is invited into headphones to hear the soundtrack of a self-reflective cultural critique parsing through family and academia.

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