Stories that stayed "under the skin"

This paper is a critical reflection on studentsʹ withholding of relevant personal stories in a college classroom which was uniquely designed to validate and welcome them. The instructor in Stories Under the Skin, an interdisciplinary course in history of science at Harvard, generously shared her own stories in lectures, regularly called upon studentsʹ subjective judgement, and engaged them in explicit discussion of the value of personal experience as evidence. Still, studentsʹ reactions were those of hesitancy and questioning the appropriateness of personal stories in an academic or scientific discussion. The qualitative lens used in this research not only helps capture the polyphony of student opinions on the subject, but also serves as a key point of debate about the use of interpretive, qualitative data in an academic setting today. The paper calls on students and instructors to acknowledge the difficulty of presenting subjective experiences in the context of academic or scientific discourse, and to consider ways of legitimizing and stimulating the constructive use of personal story in a college classroom.