Pub: Patrick Colm Hogan, AFFECTIVE NARRATOLOGY.

Hogan, Patrick Colm.  Affective Narratology: the Emotional Structure of Stories.  Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011.

Stories engage our emotions. We’ve known this at least since the days of Plato and Aristotle. What this book helps us to understand now is how our own emotions fundamentally organize and orient stories. In light of recent cognitive research and wide reading in different narrative traditions, Patrick Colm Hogan argues that the structure of stories is a systematic product of human emotion systems. Examining the ways in which incidents, events, episodes, plots, and genres are a function of emotional processes, he demonstrates that emotion systems are absolutely crucial for understanding stories.

Hogan also makes a case for the potentially integral role that stories play in the development of our emotional lives. He provides an in-depth account of the function of emotion within story—in widespread genres with romantic, heroic, and sacrificial structures, and more limited genres treating parent/child separation, sexual pursuit, criminality, and revenge—as these appear in a variety of cross-cultural traditions. In the course of the book Hogan develops interpretations of works ranging from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to African oral epics, from Sanskrit comedy to Shakespearean tragedy. Integrating the latest research in affective science with narratology, this book provides a powerful explanatory account of narrative organization.

Further information is here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803230028/ref=pe_143810_21434970_snp_dp.

"Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative," Prague, Czech Republic, May 13-15, 2012.

Human life is conducted through story, which comes naturally to us. Sharing stories is arguably the most important way we have of communicating with others about who we are and what we believe; about what we are doing and have done; about our hopes and fears; about what we value and what we don't. We learn about and make sense of our lives by telling the stories that we live; and we learn about other lives by listening to the stories told by others. Sometimes, under the influence of the culture in which we are immersed, we live our lives in ways that try to create the stories we want to be able to tell about them.

Members of many professions, including medicine, nursing, teaching, the law, psychotherapy and counseling, spend a great deal of their time listening to and communicating through stories. Story is a powerful tool for teachers, because it is a good way of enabling students and other learners to integrate what they are learning with what they already know, and of placing what is learned in a context that makes it easy to recall. Story plays an important role in academic disciplines like philosophy, theology, anthropology, archaeology, history as well as literature. Narrative methods for the collection of data are increasingly used in research in the social sciences and humanities, where the value of getting to know people in a more intimate and less distant way – almost as if we are getting to know them from the inside, begins to be viewed as having some value. Some academics have begun to realise the value of storytelling as a model for academic writing.

Most of us have lots of experience of relating to other lives through narrative forms, including the nursery stories we encounter as children; the books we read and the movies we watch. When we are moved by a play or a film or by a novel, we are moved because we begin imaginatively to live the lives of the characters that inhabit them. If we are lucky we will encounter as we grow up, fictional stories that stay with us like old friends, throughout our lives that we will revisit again and again as a way coming to terms with and responding to experiences in our own lives.

Storytelling: global reflections on narrative, will provide a space in which stories about story can be told, and in which the use of stories in the widest possible range of aspects of human life, can be reported. Abstracts are invited for individual contributions and for symposia of three closely related papers. They may address any aspect of story or narrative, including, for example:
Story as a pedagogical tool in academic disciplines such as history; anthropology, psychology, theology, cultural theory, medicine, law, philosophy, education, and archaeology.

Narrative and the gathering of stories of lived experience, as a research approach in any area of academic, professional and public life.

The place of story and storytelling in the practice of journalism; PR advertising; conflict resolution; architecture; religion; tourism, politics and the law, and in clinical contexts such as medicine, psychotherapy, nursing and counselling.

Finally abstracts may feature storytelling in any aspect of culture, including music (from opera to heavy metal, folk and sacred music); fine art; theatre; literature; cinema and digital storytelling.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/storytelling-global-reflections-on-narrative/

"Storytelling Scholarship: Beyond Sensemaking and Social Constructivist Narrative," 21st Annual Conference of SC’MOI: Standing Conference on Management and Organizational Inquiry, Providence, Rhode Island, April 12-14, 2012.

The 21st annual conference of SC’MOI (The Standing Conference on Management and Organizational Inquiry) is now accepting papers on organizational storytelling that include going beyond sensemaking and social constructivism to ontological approaches to storytelling with materiality. How to unite narrative and the antenarrative perspectives, with autoethnography, embodiment, critical pedagogy, organizational (post critical) ethnography, discourse analysis, environmental ‘green’ story, historicality, and cross-cultural places (Being-in-the-world)?

http://www.scmoi.org.

"Life and Narrative," Narrative Matters 2012, American University of Paris, University of Paris Diderot-Paris 7 and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative, St. Thomas University, May 29-June 1, 2012.

What is the relationship between life and narrative? As noted by Jerome Bruner in his article on “Life as Narrative” (1987), this is one of the central intellectual questions facing narrative inquiry and narrative practice across multiple disciplines – psychology, narratology and literary theory, digital media, sociology, history, sociolinguistics, philosophy, medicine, education, gerontology, communications, social work, ethics, religious studies, etc.

Scholars are invited to organize panel sessions and present papers on various aspects of the broad theme of “Life and Narrative.” Possible questions include:

• What is the relationship between telling and living?
• How can the narrative concept help us to better understand experience, interpretation and action?
• What does literature teach us about aspects of life, experience, mind, and social relationships?
• How can narrative research have a greater impact on the lives of real persons and institutions?
• How can narrative theory and practice better inform one another?
• Can there be a “true” narrative? What are the boundaries between fact and fiction, between autobiography and autofiction?
• How is identity storied, restoried, even de-storied across the lifespan?
• What is the effect of the media (new and old) on identity?
• What is the relationship between what is archived in individual memories and social institutions and the stories that we tell?

http://my.aup.edu/conference/narrative-matters-2012

Computational Models of Narrative, Istanbul, May 20-22, 2012.

Narratives are ubiquitous in human experience. It is clear that, to fully understand and explain human intelligence, beliefs, and behaviors, we will have to understand why narrative is universal and explain the function it serves.

The aim of this workshop series is to address key, fundamental questions about narrative, using computational techniques, so to advance our understanding of cognition, culture, and
society.

The computational study narrative does not yet have carefully constructed shared resources and corpora that can catalyze the way forward. This meeting will not only be an appropriate venue for papers addressing fundamental topics and questions regarding narrative, but also those papers which focus on the identification, collection, and construction of *shared resources and corpora* that facilitate the computational modeling of narrative.

Papers should focus on issues fundamental to computational modeling and scientific understanding, or issues related to building shared resources to advance the field. A technological application or motivation is not required.

Illustrative Topics and Questions:

* What kinds of shared resources are required for the computational study of narrative?
* What content and modalities should be put in a "Story Bank" at formal representations should be used?
* What shared resources are available, or how can already-extant resources be adapted to common needs?
* What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts? What is special that makes something a narrative?
* What are the details of the relationship between narrative and common sense?
* How are narratives indexed and retrieved? Is there a "universal" scheme for encoding episodes?
* What impact do the purpose, function, and genre of a narrative have on its form and content?
* What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs? Is there
such a set? How many possible story lines are there?
* Are there systematic differences in the formal properties of narratives from different cultures?
* What are appropriate representations for narrative? What representations underlie the extraction of narrative schemas?
* How should we evaluate computational models of narrative?

http://narrative.csail.mit.edu/ws12

"Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self," Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, November 4-5, 2011.

Narrative accounts of selfhood have been a major, if heavily contested, feature of personal identity theory in the last quarter-century, driven by the work of thinkers as diverse as MacIntyre, Ricoeur, Schechtman, Dennett and Velleman. In the last decade, it has further been claimed that Kierkegaard (despite MacIntyre’s controversial reading of him in After Virtue) also holds a narrativist conception of the self – and that his work holds valuable resources for getting to grips with the normative dimensions of narrative identity. However, Kierkegaard’s work also brings some of the serious questions about narrative identity into stark focus:

· What makes the attainment of narrative identity normative?
· Do selves exist prior to their narration?
· How can the narrative self be something we both are and are ethically enjoined to become?
· How can we understand our lives as a narrative when the ending of our story - our death - is necessarily unknown to us?
· Are metaphysically realist or anti-realist versions of the narrative selfhood hypothesis more tenable – and what of the claim that practical and metaphysical identity cannot be separated at all?
· Are narrative conceptions of self consistent with any strong form of free will?

We welcome proposals for papers (40 minutes reading length maximum) addressing the conference theme. Papers on narrative and selfhood that do not deal directly with Kierkegaard will also be considered. Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to Dr. Patrick Stokes, p.stokes2@herts.ac.uk, by Friday 5th August.

Cfp: Annual Conference, International Society for the Study of Narrative, Las Vegas, March 15-17, 2012.

Plenary Speakers:

Steven Mailloux, Loyola Marymount University
Ramón Saldívar, Stanford University
Vanessa Schwarz, University of Southern California

Contemporary Narrative Theory Session Speakers:

Heather Dubrow, Fordham University
Margaret Homans, Yale University
Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois Chicago
Mark McGurl, UCLA
Alan Nadel, University of Kentucky
Peggy Phelan, Stanford University

Conference Coordinators:

Eddie Maloney, Alan Nadel, James Phelan, Robyn Warhol

Call for Papers:

We welcome proposals for papers and panels on all aspects of narrative in any genre, period, discipline, language, and medium.

Deadline for Receipt of Proposals: Monday, October 17, 2011

Proposals for Individual Papers:

Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work and your publications.

Proposals for Panels:

Please provide a 700-word (maximum) description of the topic of the panel and of each panelist’s contribution; the title of the panel and the titles of the individual papers; and for each participant the name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the person’s work and publications. Please send proposals by email in PDF, Word, or WordPerfect to: narrative@georgetown.edu.

All participants must join the International Society for the Study of Narrative.

For more information on the ISSN, please visit: ttp://narrative.georgetown.edu/.

Visit: http://narrative.georgetown.edu/conferences/2012_Narrative_Flyer.pdf.

Cfp: "Historicising Narrative Theory." JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THEORY.

The Journal of Narrative Theory (JNT) seeks submissions for an upcoming special issue, "Historicizing Narrative Theory."

Essays (max. 10,000 words) should address themselves to the relationship(s) of contemporary narrative theory to ethnic and/or postcolonial studies, and may examine both literary and cultural texts (visual and digital mediums, music, ethnographies, tourism guides, etc).

Structuralist, or classical, narrative theory – in the vein of Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, and Tzvetan Todorov – sought to articulate a taxonomy of narrative, taking as its principle examples canonical texts of European and American literature, e.g. Genette on Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. While feminist narrative theorists, such as Susan Lanser and Robyn Warhol, have demonstrated that gender and sexuality are constitutive considerations of texts, rather than simply extra-formal considerations, similar theoretical engagements with narrative theory in terms of race, capital, imperialism, and class still need to take place. Narrative theory remains only partly decolonized despite the increasing globalization of the contemporary novel, in form and content as well as production, distribution, and consumption. We know that race, nation, and class matter to literary form, but how and why do we account for it in narrative theory? And how does narrative theory have to change/reconsider itself in order to truly decolonize?

What would a “postcolonial” or “marxist” narratology look like? Is an “ethnic,” “postcolonial,” or “marxist” narrative theory even possible or desirable? What are the dangers/pitfalls of ghettoization and/or co-optation in engaging classical narrative theory? What kinds of questions does narrative theory need to ask in order to be historicized? For example, Dan Shen, Ming Dong Gu, and others have sought to articulate Chinese narrative theory that takes into account both specific Chinese aesthetic and cultural histories as well as considers mutual artistic and theoretical influences with the West. In his work on Latino comics and postcolonial writing, Frederick Luis Aldama argues for the universality of not only the narrative tools available to writers and graphic novelists, but also the very cognitive processes that inform our subjectivity and creativity. Michael McKeon’s 2000 anthology, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, treats narrative historically but focuses only on fiction and includes only three essays on postcolonial writing.

We are looking for essays that engage with the limitations/possibilities of current narrative theory(s), either through explicit theoretical engagement with narrative theory and/or the practice/revisiting of it through innovative interpretations of texts.

Information about the journal can be found at the following address: http://www.emich.edu/english/jnt.

Contributors should follow the MLA style (7th edition), with footnotes kept at a minimum and incorporated into the text where possible.

Please send a copy of the submission by email attachment to each of the editors – Sue J. Kim (skim666@gmail.com) and Priyamvada Gopal (pg268@cam.ac.uk) – by July 15, 2011.

"The Populist Front: On the Role of Myth, Storytelling and Imaginary in Populist Movements," Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, March 18, 2011.

Welcome & Introduction

• Jorinde Seijdel - editor-in-chief Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain
• Merijn Oudenampsen - guest editor Open 20

First Panel: Populism in Theory

• Rudi Laermans & Koen Abts - Sociologists, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, "The Populist Triangle: People, Leader, Establishment"
• Oliver Marchart - Political Theorist, Universität Luzern, "Populism in Political Theory and Visual Culture"
• Sara R. Farris - Political Theorist, Universität of Konstanz, "Populism Unveiled: The Defence of Women as the Founding Myth of the New-Right"

Q&A

Lunch break

Second panel: Imagery & Myth

• John Kraniauskas - Latin American Studies, Birkbeck University London, "Eva Peron as the Image of Peronism"
• Sven Lütticken – Art Critic, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, "A Heteronomous Hobby: Report on the Netherlands"
• Aukje van Rooden - Philosopher / Literary Theorist, Universiteit Utrecht, "The Myth of Modern Politics"

Q&A

Tea and coffee break

Presentation:

• Steve Lambert – Artist / Intelligent Troublemaker, "Constructing Small Scale Temporary Utopias"
• Screening of the film Museum Songspiel, Followed by Q & A with filmmakers Chto Delat – Art Collective, Sint Petersburg / Moscow

Cfp: "Storyworlds Across Media: Mediality – Multimodality – Transmediality," Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, June 30– July 2, 2011.

Even though narratology was conceived as a transmedial endeavour from its very beginnings in Russian formalism and French structuralism, most of its more influential models have been – and continue to be – developed in the context of literary criticism and film studies. In contemporary media culture, however, the creation of storyworlds is not limited to literature and traditional feature films. Rather, emerging forms of multimodal and interactive narration, experiments with the distinction between fictional and nonfictional narrative, various forms of intermedial adaptation, and attempts at 'transmedia storytelling' create new ways of presenting narrative content, thereby calling attention to the affordances and limitations of different narrative media as well as to their potential for cooperation. The increased interest in the relation between media and narrative sparked by the development of digital technology and the recent proliferation of delivery techniques in the context of media convergence has reinforced the need for an interdisciplinary and transmedial narratology that studies storyworlds across media.

We welcome proposals for papers on the following aspects of storyworlds across media:
· Transmedial narratological concepts: What are the theoretical problems encountered by the project of a transmedial narratology that spans different media? To what extent and under what conditions can narratological concepts be applied across narrative media?
· Mediality of Narrative: In what ways is the mediality of pictorial narrative (e.g. paintings, photographs), graphic narrative (e.g. graphic novels), audiovisual narrative (e.g. TV-series, film), and interactive narrative (e.g. computer games) relevant for their specific narrativity?
· Intermedial Relations: How do older media react to the emergence of new media by imitating their techniques or borrowing their resources? How do new media start out borrowing the narrative forms of older media but eventually develop their own forms?
· Transmedial Narration: What kinds of specific problems arise from the transmedial representation of characters, events, and storyworlds in the context of adaptations, transmedia storytelling franchises, and other forms of transmedial narration?

Please send proposals (including a 300-word abstract, contact information and a 100-word bio) for 30-minute papers via email (as a PDF) to storyworlds@uni-mainz.de no later than March 31th, 2011. Accomodation for speakers will be provided. Publication of the conference proceedings is planned.

Cfp: "Narrative and Hypertext 2011," Workshop on Narrative Systems, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, June 6, 2011.

This workshop aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum to bring together individuals from the humanities and science communities to share research and discuss state-of-the-art research on narrative from both a technical and aesthetic perspective. Narratives are complex creations prevalent in our entertainment, communication, and understanding of the world and its events. By building better models of narrative along with methods for generation, adaption, and presentation we enable narrative systems to become more effective but also improve our understanding of narrative structures. This workshop offers a focus for this interdisciplinary community to share research, offer solutions and contributions to the challenges faced in the study of narrative and the development of narrative systems, and offers a platform of discussion for potential collaboration for members of the hypertext community working with narrative.

Topics include:

- Models of Narrative
- Systems for the Presentation of Narratives
- Adaptive and Personalised Narratives
- Narrative Analysis
- Narrative Generation
- Narrative as a method of Knowledge Capture
- Social Media as Narrative
- Narrative as a lens on identity
- Argumentation and Rhetoric
- Interactive Fiction
- Cinematic Hypertext
- Authorial support systems
- Novel applications of narrative systems
- e-Literature

Visit: http://nht11.ecs.soton.ac.uk/.

Project Narrative Summer Institute (PNSI), Ohio State University, June 13-24, 2011.

The Project Narrative Summer Institute (PNSI) is a two-week workshop on the Ohio State University campus that offers scholars who have earned a Ph.D. (or other terminal degree) in any discipline the opportunity for an intensive study of core concepts and issues in narrative theory. Jim Phelan and Frederick Aldama will direct the 2011 institute, which will accept twenty participants and will run from Monday, June 13 to Friday, June 24.

"Narrative understanding;" "narrative explanation;" "narrative as a way of thinking;" "narrative as self-construction:" these phrases are now common currency in the conversations of literary critics, historians, philosophers, social scientists, therapists, legal scholars, and even some scientists and medical professionals, as their disciplines reflect on the ubiquity and power of storytelling. This Narrative Turn, with its cross-disciplinary consensus about the importance of narrative, invites investigation into narrative's form and effects, into its production and consumption. What is it about character, plot, ways of telling, and other elements of narrative that make it such a widely-deployed way of organizing and explaining experience and knowledge? More simply, how does narrative work in itself, how does it try to work on audiences, and how do audiences work with and against it?

The Project Narrative Summer Institute will explore these questions in conjunction with a group of diverse literary narratives -- diverse both in their media and in their cultural origins -- and, in so doing, provide insight into essential elements of narrative and narrative theory. Even as the institute explores such theoretical issues as the dynamics of narrative transmission, the architecture of narrative worlds, and the distinction between fictional and nonfictional narrative, it will emphasize the value of establishing two-way traffic between narrative and narrative theory, that is, of recognizing that just as theory informs our understanding of individual narratives, so too do narratives lead us to revise, extend, and on occasion overturn existing theory.

Visit the website here: http://projectnarrative.osu.edu/events/yr2011/summerinstitute.cfm.

Harold, James. Review of Gregory Currie's NARRATIVES AND NARRATORS. NDPR (October 2010).

Currie, Gregory.   Narratives and Narrators: a Philosophy of Stories.  Oxford: OUP, 2010.

I expect Gregory Currie's new book, Narratives and Narrators, to attain the same importance and influence in philosophical thinking about narrative that his earlier books The Nature of Fiction and Image and Mind have had in the philosophy of fiction and film, respectively. It is an ambitious, careful, and philosophically rich work containing a number of novel and important arguments. The book is not driven by a single overarching thesis; it is, rather, a wide-ranging discussion of a variety of topics associated with narrative. Currie will sometimes move from one topic to examine a loosely related issue before returning to the central thread. For example, several chapters end with appendices that offer evolutionary hypotheses which, if proven, would lend modest auxiliary support to the main argument of the chapter. Although these and other asides sometimes seem unnecessary, they are never uninteresting.


The book begins with an account of what narratives are and then moves to examine a series of philosophical problems about narrators and narratives, for example: the relationship between narrators and authors; the ubiquity of narrators thesis; the nature of point of view and how it is conveyed; the puzzle of imaginative resistance; the nature of irony and pretence; and, perhaps most surprisingly, skepticism about the notion of character, which has heretofore mostly been discussed in connection with virtue ethics and meta-ethics. An "analytical contents" section immediately following the traditional Table of Contents does an excellent job of distilling the essential argumentative pieces of the book; this is an especially helpful device for readers who may be looking to jump into the middle of the book to see what Currie has to say about one of these particular questions.

Some of the standout sections of the book include Currie's careful and moderate treatment of the nature of narrative, his refutation of the "ubiquity of narrators" thesis, and his subtle and compelling account of point of view. In each of these cases, Currie is fair to his critics and cautious in his conclusions. He builds on his conclusions in sometimes surprising ways. His theory of point of view is used as a basis for a theory of irony, which in turn leads him to a detailed reading of Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) in Chapter 9.

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21710.

Cfp: "Teaching Narrative and Teaching through Narrative," Nordic Network of Narrative Studies, University of Tampere, May 26-28, 2011.

The conference is organized to explore the broad interface of narrative theory, literary pedagogy, and the uses of narrative as a tool for teaching and distributing knowledge in diverse disciplinary fields. A special feature of the conference will be a series of workshops devoted to close analysis of particular narrative texts – fictional as well as non-fictional – which are studied together by the participants from varying theoretical angles.

Plenary Speakers:

Professor Jens Brockmeier (University of Manitoba and Free University of Berlin)
Professor Rita Charon (Columbia University)
Professor Leona Toker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Visit the conference website here: http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/taide/teaching_narrative.html.

Cfp: "Keeping it Real: Narratives of Ordinary and Extraordinary People Across Media," Narrative Research Group, Media School, Bournemouth University, September 3, 2010.

The Narrative Research Group based in the Media School at Bournemouth University is hosting an interdisciplinary one-day symposium that will examine the representation of real people across media. Invited speakers include professionals, practitioners and scholars working with stories about real people in journalism, literature, visual media, online spaces and popular culture. It is hoped that the symposium will provide a forum to bring together those interested in the intersections between narrative theory and media/cultural studies. Please see the attached draft programme for further details.

This event is free to attend, and coffee and lunch will be provided on the day. However, as spaces are limited, you will need to register in advance by contacting the convenors, Bronwen Thomas (bthomas@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Julia Round (jround@bournemouth.ac.uk) before Wednesday 25 August.

Pub: Huhn, Peter, et al., eds. THE LIVING HANDBOOK OF NARRATOLOGY. Hamburg: Hamburg UP, 2009 - .

The Living Handbook of Narratology (LHN) is based on the Handbook of Narratology first published by Walter de Gruyter in 2009. As an open access publication it makes available all of the 32 articles contained in the original print version—and more: the LHN also offers the additional functionality of an electronic publication, including full-text search facility, one-click-export of reference information, and digital humanities tools for text analysis.

The LHN continuously expands its original content base by adding new articles on further concepts and theories fundamental to narratology, and to the study of narrative in general. The LHN is published in a WiKi-System: it offers registered narratologists the opportunity to comment on existing articles, to suggest additions or corrections, and to submit new articles to the editors.

• Author by Jörg Schönert
• Character by Fotis Jannidis
• Cognitive Narratology by David Herman
• Coherence by Michael Toolan
• Conversational Narration / Oral Narration by Monika Fludernik
• Dialogism by David Shepherd
• Event and Eventfulness by Peter Hühn
• Fictional vs. Factual Narration by Jean-Marie Schaeffer
• Focalization by Burkhard Niederhoff
• Heteroglossia by Valerij Tjupa
• Identity and Narration by Michael Bamberg
• Illusion (Aesthetic) by Werner Wolf
• Implied Author by Wolf Schmid
• Mediacy and Narrative Mediation by Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik
• Metalepsis by John Pier
• Metanarration and Metafiction by Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning
• Narration in Film by Johann N. Schmidt
• Narration in Poetry and Drama by Peter Hühn and Roy Sommer
• Narration in Various Disciplines by Norbert Meuter
• Narration in Various Media by Marie-Laure Ryan
• Narrative Constitution by Michael Scheffel
• Narrative Levels by Didier Coste and John Pier
• Narrativity by H. Porter Abbott
• Narratology by Jan Christoph Meister
• Narrator by Uri Margolin
• Performativity by Ute Berns
• Perspective / Point of View by Burkhard Niederhoff
• Reader by Gerald Prince
• Schemata by Catherine Emmott and Marc Alexander
• Space by Marie-Laure Ryan
• Speech Representation by Brian McHale
• Tellability by Raphaël Baroni

LHN is a product of the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, Hamburg University (http://www.icn.uni-hamburg.de/).

Download the essays here: http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Main_Page.

Annual Conference, International Society for the Study of Narrative, Washington University of St. Louis, April 7-10, 2011.

The 2011 Narrative Conference is an interdisciplinary forum addressing all dimensions of narrative theory and practice. The conference is sponsored by Washington University in St. Louis and the International Society for the Study of Narrative. Keynote Speakers: Patrick Colm Hogan,University of Connecticut Janet H. Murray, Georgia Institute of Technology Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois Organizers: Emma Kafalenos, emkafale@artsci.wustl.edu Erin McGlothlin, mcglothlin@wustl.edu Visit the conference website here: http://narrative.wustl.edu./.

"Working with Stories: Narrative as a Meeting Place for Theory, Analysis and Practice," University of Southern Denmark, March 10-11, 2011.

Second Conference, European Narratology Network. “The narratives of the world are numberless,” Roland Barthes stated in his famous introduction to the structural analysis of narrative in 1966. “Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances – as though any material were fit to receive man’s stories. ... Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself.” In the years that have passed since Barthes’ seminal essay, scholars in the humanities and the social sciences have devoted considerable effort to exploring the roles and functions of narrative in human history and behavior. They have done so not only with regard to literature and other epic modes of expression, but also in the areas of psychology, cultural studies, communication studies, cognitive sciences and sociology. In recent times, trans- and interdisciplinary perspectives on narrative studies have drawn increasing interest. The purpose of this conference is to contribute to this ongoing development by welcoming papers which explore and reflect the transdisciplinary aspects of narrative theory and conceptualization. Papers focusing on the following subjects will be of special interest to the conference: · Comparative surveys of narratological concepts across disciplines. · The use/misuse of narratological concepts in uncommon narrative environments. · The conceptualization and analysis of multimodal narratives. · Conceptual development with interest in unnatural narratives and antinarrative strategies. Keynote speakers: · Matti Hyvärinen, Tampere University: “Traveling concepts of Narrative” · Wolf Schmid, Hamburg University: “The Legacy of Russian Formalism in a Transdisciplinary Perspective” · Cynthia M. Grund, University of Southern Denmark: “Narrative and Music” · Lars-Christer Hydén, Linköping University, Sweden: “Narrative and Medicine” · Jan Alber, Freiburg University: “The Unnatural Across the Fiction/Non-Fiction Divide” · Susan Lanser, Brandeis University: “Feminist Narratology in a Transdisciplinary Perspective“ Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 1st, 2010. Send 200-word abstracts to Associate Professor Per Krogh Hansen (University of Southern Denmark, Center for Narratological Studies): pkh@litcul.sdu.dk. Please write ‘ENN Conference: Working with stories’ in the subject line. Visit the conference website here: http://www.sdu.dk/Om_SDU/Institutter_centre/Ilkm/Forskning/Forskningsprojekter/C_Narratologi/Arrangementer/The%202nd%20Conference%20of%20the%20ENN.aspx?sc_lang=en.

"New Developments in Narratology: Cognitive, Communicative and Philosophical Approaches," Tartu University, May 28-30, 2010.

Nordic Network of Narrative Studies. Objectives: The conference seeks to promote a dialogue among scholars of narrative and provide an overview of the current state of narratology, a variety of narratological methods and analytic approaches, overlappings with other fields and borrowings from various disciplines (cognitive science, rhetorics, sociolinguistics, media studies, psychology, philosophy). The conference invites to reflect upon the (enriching or impoverishing) impact of these overlappings on the state of the art, revision of old concepts and transfer of concepts from one domain to the other and the status of fiction within the new paradigms. The conference seeks to develop a critical understanding of these processes and to test the applicability of new methods and concepts. We welcome both theoretical discussions and practical, narrowly focused case studies that address these issues. Invited Speakers: Prof. Daniel D. Hutto (University of Hertfordshire) Prof. Gregory Currie (University of Nottingham) Prof. Marie-Laure Ryan (University of Colorado, Boulder) Visit the conference website here: http://www.nordicnarratologynet.ut.ee/723086.

"Computational Models of Narrative," Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Arlington, Virginia, November 11-13, 2010.

Narratives are ubiquitous. We use them to educate, communicate, convince, explain, and entertain. As far as we know every society has narratives, which suggests they are deeply rooted and serve an important cognitive function: that narratives do something for us. It is clear that, to fully explain human intelligence, beliefs, and behaviors, we will have to understand and explain narrative.

Topics:

Despite a revival of interest in the computational understanding of narrative, there is still great uncertainty regarding fundamental questions. What does narrative do for us? What exactly is narrative? What representations are required to model narrative? This symposium will address fundamental topics and questions regarding the computational modeling and scientific understanding of narrative. Immediate technological applications, while not discouraged, are not required.

Questions include:
•What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts? What is special about the discourse that makes something a narrative, rather than something else?
•What is the relationship between narrative and common sense? Does understanding narrative first require we understand common sense reasoning?
•How are narratives indexed and retrieved? Is there a “universal” scheme for encoding narratives?
•What impact does the purpose, function, and genre of a narrative have on its form and content?
•Are there systematic differences in the formal properties of narratives from different cultures?
•What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs? Is there such a set? Is there a recipe for generating narratives?
•What are the appropriate representations for the computational modeling of narrative? What representations underlie the extraction of narrative schemas from experience?
•How can we evaluate computational models of narrative?

The symposium will bring together researchers with a wide variety of perspectives to share what is known about the fundamentals of the computational modeling of narrative and to explore the forefront of that knowledge. We seek participation from as wide a variety of approaches as possible, including not only AI researchers and technologists, but also psychologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, philosophers, narrative theorists, anthropologists, educators, storytellers, and neuroscientists.

Visit the conference website here: http://narrative.csail.mit.edu/fs10/.