Scott’s talk is called “Myth as a Bridge: The Power of Archetypal Autocritography”
I will illustrate the transformative combination of archetypal analysis and autocritography I have developed as a means of building critical consciousness and empathy across differences of identity. While Henry Louis Gates, Jr., coined the term autocritography, Michael Awkward has employed it provocatively as I have learned and used it—an academic yet intimate critique of literature that uses the personal (autobiographical) to approach the scholarly (critical) along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other areas of difference. Rooted in black feminism, this intersectional critique, united with self-reflection and empathetic imagination, produces autocritography’s dynamism in what Paulo Freire terms “conscientization.”
After elucidating autocritography’s liberatory power, I will demonstrate how, after learning this approach in my graduate English studies, I merged it with Jungian/archetypal criticism—developing an approach that deepens the transpersonal, empathetic lens through which one sees Self in Other, in both literature and life. Having employed this method and taught undergraduates with it, I will attest to its efficacy in fostering allyship via the recognition of our fundamental connectedness with each other, despite identity differences. My presentation will contain both the theory and practice of my technique for scholars, teachers, helping professionals, or anyone interested in “liberatory consciousness.”
About Scott
Scott Neumeister is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, and mythic pathfinder from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his PhD in English from the University of South Florida in 2018. His specialization in multi-ethnic American literature and mythology comes after careers as an information technology systems engineer and a teacher of English and mythology at the middle school and college levels. He is coauthor of Let Love Lead: On a Course to Freedom with Gary L. Lemons and Susie Hoeller, as well as a facilitator for the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Myth and Meaning book club at Literati.
To hear Scott’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!
The Mythologium is a conference and retreat for mythologists and friends of myth, held July 29 – 31 via Zoom in the Pacific time zone.