摘要：Patricia Leavy's arts-based research novel American Circumstance is part of a new social fictions series from Sense Publishers. In the Preface, Leavy (2013) states that for her, "American Circumstance is a pure a/r/tographical rendering¡ªthat which fully merges my artist-researcher-teacher identities" (p. xiii). The book is fictional, yet based on her autoethnographic observations "and more than a decade of teaching and sociological research about gender, class, race, identity, and relationships" (p. xiii). The three main characters of the book, Paige, Mollie, and Gwen, represent a microcosm of issues that American women of the upper class face, and how their problems compare and contrast to those of women in other parts of the world. Leavy shows that the lines between fiction and scholarship are beginning to merge, and that an academic can write an effective fictional account to represent the data of her sociological findings. As a researcher and creative writer who is interested in the concept of social fiction, I would have liked to have known more about Dr. Leavy's data collection methods, particularly because I am intrigued by autoethnography as a methodology. However, I appreciated her introducing herself as an a/r/tographer. I am familiar with this term from my arts-based inquiry course, and I too see my identities of artist, researcher, and teacher as interrelated and influential of my scholarship and my worldview.
