Leaning ― A Poetics of Personal Relationships

Ronald J Pelias explores leaning as a metaphor for analyzing interpersonal interaction. Bodies leaning toward one another are engaged, developing the potential for long-lasting, meaningful relationships. But this ideal is not often realized. Pelias makes use of a wide variety of tools such as personal narrative, autoethnography, poetic inquiry and performative writing in his exploration of the physical space of relationships. This deeply personal work is essential for scholars and students of qualitative research and autoethnography.

Ronald J. Pelias is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Speech Communications at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the author of numerous books on performance studies and performance methodologies, including most recently Performance Studies: The Interpretation of Aesthetic Texts (St. Martin's Press, 1992), Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcher's Body (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), and A Methodology of the Heart: Evoking Academic and Daily Life (AltaMira, 2004). In 2000, he received the Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies and the Distinguished Service Award, both from the National Communication Association.