Here are some of the events which have been sponsored by Project Narrative this quarter. Check out the “Upcoming Events” category to see what’s happening next!
May 16: A Cross-Campus View of Story in Teaching, Research, and Outreach. 1:00 – 2:30 in the Wexner Center Film/Video Theater.
Co-sponsored by Project Narrative, The Digital Union, The Office of Faculty and TA Development, The Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning and Research, and Ohio State University Libraries
Join us for a lively conversation about how colleagues from across the campus use the notion of “story” to define and enhance their teaching, research, and outreach activities. Panelists will include Adeleke Adeeko (English), Susan Fisher (Biology), Joe Ponce (English), Joy Reilly (Theatre), and Sabra Webber (Near Eastern Languages and Culture/Comp Studies). Audience participation is encouraged! This is the third and final event in OSU’s daylong celebration of the International Day for Sharing Life Stories. For more information about additional events at OSU, see:http://telr.osu.edu/storytelling/dayofstories.html For information about the international celebration, see: http://internationaldayblog.storycenter.org/
May 14: The Sopranos vs. Lost: Debating the “Highs” and “Lows” of the Serial Narrative Arts, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. in Denney Hall 311
For the second in the new series of Project Narrative debates, Sean O’Sullivan and Jared Gardner will be tackling their shared interest in serial narrative from two very different perspectives. In the corner of The Sopranos, Sean will be arguing for formal innovation, the art of the everyday, and the vital role of serial fiction in literary history. In the corner ofLost, Jared will be arguing for intertextuality, the interactive pleasures of seriality, and the high art of low culture. The debate will aim to use these two series as touchstones for broader questions about serial television and cinema.
April 29, 2008
Workshop on “Current Trends in Narrative Theory: International Perspectives”
A workshop featuring a panel of scholars from Denmark, England, Israel, and Norway. 4:00 – 6:00, The Knight House (104 E. 15th Avenue).
More information about the workshop.
May 6
Talk by Joseph Slaughter, from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University
Talk on “Making Human Rights Legible: Narrative Forms, Legal Norms, and the Universal Declaration.” 4:00 – 6:00 p.m., Denney Hall 311.
Co-sponsored by Project Narrative; Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy (Rhetorical Visions); and the Department of English
Joseph Slaughter argues that the twentieth-century rise of the “world novel” and of international human rights law are related phenomena: they share a conceptual vocabulary and a deep narrative grammar for imagining what sociologists, early theorists of the novel, and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights have each called “the free and full development of the human personality.” International law projects an image of the human being whose normative life story corresponds to the narrative conventions and humanist social vision of the classical European
Bildungsroman, which gives literary form to and normalizes the moral and ideological claims of human rights.
Slaughter’s book Human Rights, Inc. The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law just received the Rene Wellek Prize (2008), awarded by the American Comparative Literature Association for an outstanding work in the field of literary and cultural theory.
April 9, 2008
Panel discussion on the work of novelist Brian Evenson and issues in the study of experimental writing
April 10, 2008
April 14 & 15, 2008
Visit by Brian Evenson, who will conduct a for-credit graduate workshop and also give a reading from his fiction
Drawing on work by a range of narrative theorists (Gerard Genette, Mieke Bal, Manfred Jahn, and Ruth Ronen), and putting this scholarship into dialogue with several short stories, this workshop will discuss productive interactions between contemporary writing and narrative theory. We’ll look at fiction (by William Trevor, Bruno Schulz, and Kelly Link) that poses narrative problems, thinking both about how narrative theory can help us see the problems in a different light and about how, in turn, these works help us see potential blindspots in the theory itself. What do we, as writers and students of literature, have to learn from one another?
March 27, 2008
“Two Kinds of Recognition Respect: Narrative and Truth in Human Relations”, presentation by Steve Darwall, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan.
In The Second-Person Standpoint, I argue that holding ourselves accountable to each other mediates a fundamental form of respect, or recognition, of one another as having a common basic dignity as persons. But this is not the only form that something called “respect for persons” has historically taken. In honor cultures, respect is a response topersonae, that is, to individuals as occupying different roles or statuses in a social performance or narrative. I explore this fundamental difference between honor cultures and accountability cultures and their different relations to narrative and truth-seeking, respectively.
April 3, 2008
Colloquium featuring the research of Jan Alber and Marina Grishakova, international visiting scholars working under the auspices of Project Narrative.
February 29, 2008
Norman Jones, “The Erotics of Narrative: Sexuality Studies, Narrative Theory, and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!,” with a response by Joe Ponce
Focusing on Absalom, Absalom! as a case study, this talk explores narrative as a form of ethical argumentation particularly well-suited to articulating sexually marginalized subject positions in powerful ways. Analyzing this link between modes of narration and strategies for ethical positioning, I argue that ideas from narrative theory can help us productively reconceptualize sexual identities. I also suggest ways in which narrative theory and sexuality studies can benefit from being conceived of as interconnected domains within a broader field of inquiry.
February 21, 2008
“Shipwreck Narratives and the Reinvention of Self,” a Presentation by James Morrison, co-sponsored with Greek and Latin
This talk on the literary treatment of shipwrecks explores the opportunity for personal transformation and the reinvention of self with respect to romantic possibilities or a change in political or social status. I examine the classical models of Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Tempest, and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, with regard to the circumstances and consequences of the shipwreck itself; developments regarding identity and self-transformation; and the historical circumstances lying behind the fiction. Modern adaptations by Walcott, Cesaire, Coetzee-and “Cast Away” and “Lost”–demonstrate the vitality of this archetypal scene: a shipwrecked survivor confronting the elements. After a quick survey of the larger project, I will focus on the narrative techniques used to establish that someone has taken on a new role after surviving the wreck.
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