ANTH 571A - Narrative in Culture & Society

Credits: Variable

In this seminar, we will explore the role of storytelling in everyday social life. Since the narrative turn in the 1980s, narrative analysis has become more prominent across the social sciences. This course takes a linguistic anthropological approach that emphasizes the need to study oral narrative in its entirety, considering both the story and the storytelling event. We will investigate stories told in various contexts, by not only looking at their literal content’the story’ but especially by studying their relationship to the interaction itself, that is, the storytelling event. In this way, we will explore how narratives emerge dynamically between the interviewer and the interviewee or between the narrator and his/her audience and how narrators and other speech participants co-construct their identity in interaction while telling stories. Throughout the semester we will explore different types of oral narratives. We will examine autobiographical narratives, stories told in interview settings, stories emerging from doctor-patient encounters, storytelling in the classroom, digital storytelling (on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), and also forms of shorter storytelling, such as jokes. We will be guided by the following questions: What role do oral narratives play in the construction of speech participants-identity? What techniques do speakers employ to project or alter a certain identity in their storytelling? How can linguistic anthropologists, sociolinguists, or anthropologists more generally make use of oral narratives as tools for their research? These and other questions will be addressed in this seminar through a wide range of readings and discussions and by looking at many narrative types, from oral narratives in interview settings to digital storytelling. No prior knowledge in linguistic anthropology or in narrative studies is required.