My doctoral work was a trifecta of marginalized scholarship since I attained an EdD (lowly second cousin to the PhD) by preparing a qualitative dissertation (closeted step-cousin of the sainted quantitative paradigm)—an educational biography (a mish-mash of a non-academic field, education, with a popular but lowly literary genre, biography) of Lou LaBrant (Thomas, 2001).
My scholarship on biography helped me understand the roots of why academia shuns the biography: Biography began as hagiography, fabrications spun to praise manufactured heroes instead of scholarly tomes crafted to examine and reveal complicated people with monumental lives.
One of the most famous results of hagiography is the lingering story of George Washington professing as a child that he could not lie, confessing his cutting down the cherry tree. While