Narrative Theory Independent Study

This course is a Spring 2010 Division II Independent Study created by Claire Oberholtzer and Katie Culpepper and facilitated in name by Kim Chang but in practice by several different professors.

= Course Description =

What we are hoping to gain from this study is an understanding about how narratives function, in personal or creative lives but also in academia. We want to explore how different fields connect through their utilization and creation of narrative, and what has been written and said about what narratives really are and the theory behind them. This course will run from February to April 2010 and will consist of 3 four-week units focusing on narrative in psychology, narrative in mythology and narrative in literature. For each of these units different faculty members will be consulted, meeting in person at least once and communicating regularly. At the end of each unit both students will write a short paper summarizing and consolidating the information they have encountered and peer-edit each others' papers before turning them in to the faculty members working on that section. Any sort of large final project will be discussed later in the course, once we have a more thorough grounding in the subject.

Guidelines for short essays

 * 2-4 pages and/or as long as they need to be but not too long
 * annotated bibliography: this is what I read for this section, this is what the main ideas were, this is what I got out of it
 * summary of the full unit: main point/key ideas, what you found most important to know about this section, what you understood the least, questions you have for further study

= Syllabus =

Unit 1: Narrative and Psychology (Kim Chang and Melissa Burch)

 * Week 1 (January 29--February 5): Logistics and Planning
 * Week 2 (February 5--February 12): Freud, Jung and Psychoanalysis More Logistics, coordination of materials
 * Week 3 (February 12--February 19): Bruner, the neuropsychology of narrative

Resources: Bruner (1986), Tucker and Hanlon (1998), Snow, Douglas and Ponsford (1999), Coelho (2002), Coelho et al (2003)


 * Week 4 (February 19--February 26): Presenting at SS Lightning Talks. Memory, acquisition of narrative skills, narrative and trauma.  

Resources: Bruner (1986), syllabus materials from Marian MacCurdy's Therapeutic Writing course, Bohn and Berntsen (2008), van den Broek et al (2001), Lynch and van den Broek (2007).


 * Week 5: (February 26--March 5): short papers due for peer-review, internalization of narratives, personal vs cultural narratives (short papers reviewed, revised and sent to Kim Chang during the next week)

Resources: Bohn and Berntsen (2008), Thomson and Berntsen (2008), Nelson (2000), Nelson (2003), Nelson (2009), Bohanek et al (2009).

Unit 2: Narrative and Mythology (Alan Hodder and McKinley Melton)

 * Week 1 (March 5--March 12): final discussion of narrative and psych, introduction to myth theory

Resources: Dundes 1984.


 * Week 2 (March 12--March 19): Spring Break, we will still read but will not meet, starting on McKinley's materials
 * Week 3 (March 19--March 26):discussion of McKinley's materials, historical/cultural and mythological narratives

Resources (for both weeks): Hamblet (2008), Brodkin (1998), Ford (2000), Gill (1983), Arnold (1996)


 * Week 4 (March 26--April 2): myth themes in news and media assignment, more discussion of general myth materials
 * Week 5 (April 2--April 9): short papers due for peer-review (short papers reviewed, revised and sent to Alan Hodder during the next week)

Unit 3: Narrative and Literature (McKinley Melton and Brown Kennedy)

 * Week 1 (April 9--April 16): Katie sick: did not meet
 * Week 2 (April 16--April 23): History of narrative theory, how does literature define narrative?

Resources: Martin (1986), Bal (1985)


 * Week 3 (April 23--April 30): Katie cancelled: did not meet
 * Week 4 (May 1--May 7):

= Book List =

General Theory

 * Bruner, Jerome (1986). "Actual Minds, Possible Worlds." Harvard University Press: Cambridge.
 * Bruner, Jerome (???). "Making Stories Law, Literature, Life"
 * Bruner, Jerome (???). "Acts of Meaning"

Psychology

 * Bohanek, Jennifer, Robyn Fivush, Widaad Zaman, Caitlin E. Lepore, Shela Merchant, and Marshall Duke (2009). "Narrative Interaction in Family Dinnertime Conversations". Merril-Palmer Quarterly . 55(4): 488-515.
 * Bohn, Annette and Dorthe Berntsen (2008). "Life Story Development in Childhood: The Development of Life Story Abilities and the Acquisition of Cultural Life Scripts From Late Middle Childhood to Adolescence". Developmental Psychology . 44(4): 1135-1147.
 * Coelho, Carl (2002). "Story Narratives of Adults With Closed Head Injury and Non-Brain-Injured Adults: Influence of Socioeconomic Status, Elicitation Task, and Executive Functioning". Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research . 45: 1232-1248.
 * Coelho, Carl, Kathleen Youse, Karen Le and Richard Feinn (2003). "Narrative and conversational discourse of adults with closed head injuries and non-brain-injured adults: A discriminant analysis". Aphasiology . 17(5): 499-510.
 * Nelson, Katherine (2000). "Narrative, Time and the Emergence of the Encultured Self". Culture and Psychology. 6(2): 183-196.
 * Nelson, Katherine (2003). "Self and social functions: individual autobiographical memory and collective narrative". Memory . 11(2): 125-136.
 * Nelson, Katheine (2009). "Narrative Practices and Folk Psychology". Journal of Consciousness Studies . 16(6-8): 69-93.
 * Snow, Pamela, Jacinta Douglas and Jennie Ponsford (1999). "Narrative discourse following severe traumatic brain injury: a longitudinal follow-up". Aphasiology . 13(7): 529-551.
 * Thomsen, Dorthe and Dorthe Berntsen (2008). "The cultural life script and life story chapters contribute to the reminiscence bump". Memory . 16(4): 420-435.
 * Tucker, Frances and Robert Hanlon (1998). "Effects of mild traumatic brain injury on narrative discourse production". Brain Injury . 12(9): 783-792.

Historical / Non-Fiction Narratives

 * The Myth of the Negro Past – Melville Herskovits
 * Savage Constructions: The Myth of African Savagery – Wendy Hamblet
 * Black Athena: The AfroAsiatic Roots of the Classical Civilization – Martin Bernal
 * Exchanging our Country Marks – Michael Gomez
 * How Jews Became White Folks – Karen Brodkin
 * How Race is Lived in America – New York Times Correspondents
 * Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery – Jerrold Hirsch
 * Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory – David W. Blight
 * When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection – Norman Yetman, ed.
 * Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War – Tony Horwitz
 * Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture – Werner Sollors

Cultural Narratives
I'm including here literary narratives, as well as the oral tradition, etc.


 * The Hero With an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa – Clyde Ford
 * Native American Traditions: Sources and Interpretations – Sam Gill
 * A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore – Harold Courlander
 * African American Folktales – Roger Abrahams
 * Black Culture and Black Consciousness – Lawrence Levine
 * The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales – Charles Chestnutt
 * Every Tongue Got to Confess – Zora Neale Hurston
 * Monkey: Folk Novel of China – Wu Ch'eng-en
 * Monsters, Tricksters and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales &amp; American Identities – A. James Arnold
 * Talk that Talk: An Anthology of African American Storytelling - Linda Goss
 * An African Treasury – Langston Hughes
 * The Arabian Nights – Husain Haddawy, trans.
 * Santeria Stories – Luis Manuel Nunez
 * Hausaland Tales from the Nigerian Marketplace – Gavin McIntosh
 * The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible – Allen Dwight Callahan
 * Ellis Island Interviews: Immigrants Tell their Stories in the Own Words – Peter Morton Coan
 * Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land – Wesley Brown

Literature

 * Martin, Wallace (1986). "Recent Theories of Narrative". Cornell University Press: Ithaca.
 * Bal, Mieke (1985). "Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative". University of Toronto Press: Toronto.

Narrative Psychology Internet and Resource Guide

 * http://web.lemoyne.edu/%7Ehevern/narpsych/narpsych.html