“Narrative on the Move” -- Latest Issue of the E-Journal Narrative Works Now Available

 

Published: Monday, Sep 10, 2012

The third issue of Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations, & Interventions, an e-journal published by St. Thomas University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative, is now available on-line.

The special issue explores the question of whether narrative inquiry is moving, and if so, in what direction. It is guest edited by Anneke Sools of the University of Twente and Floor Basten of OrléoN, a company that conducts social-scientific and linguistic-narrative research.

“In 2010, we initiated the Netherlands Network for Narrative Research because we wanted to provide a platform for the broad range of Dutch researchers who were hitherto scattered among all sorts of disciplines but who shared an interest in narrative,” they write in the introduction “Going Narrative-- But Where Will It Takes Us?”

“This special issue is a collection of eight papers presented at the first symposium organized by the NNN and the University for Humanist Studies. The aim of the symposium was to sketch, and perhaps broaden, the horizon for narrative research and bring together narrative researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences and from different geographical locations and bring the Dutch network in contact with other networks or centres of narrative research.”

Narrative Works is an peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal committed to exploring the complex role of narrative in human life. To view the issue, visit: http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/cirn/current_issue.aspx.

“Travelling with Narratives”

“Narrative on the Move” features articles by Matti Hyvarinen, Brian Schiff, Gerben J. Westerhof and Ernst T. Bohlmeijer.

A professor in sociology at the University of Tampere in Finland, Dr. Hyvarinen, in his article, “Prototypes, Genres, and Concepts: Travelling with Narratives,” explains the merits of a more critical approach to the history of narrative theory. He suggests that narrative has primarily travelled either as a concept, metaphor, or prototype rather than as a full theory or method.

“Instead of one, unitary narrative turn, the article argues for the existence of several diverse and partly contrasting narrative turns,” writes Dr. Hyvarinen. “The recent experiential turn in narrative studies and the consequent change of the prototype of narrative gives a strong impetus for a new wave of cross-disciplinary narrative theory.”

Dr. Brian Schiff argues that the most salient aspect of narrative is not the arrangement of speech elements into a particular order, but the kinds of actions that can be accomplished with narratives. Schiff, a professor of psychology at the American University of Paris, writes that “…one of the primary functions of narrating is to ‘make present’ life experience and interpretations of life in a particular time and space. Narrating brings experience and interpretations into play, into a field of action, in a specific here and now.”

Psychology professors Dr. Gerben J. Westerhof and Dr. Ernst T. Bohlmeijer, of University of Twente in The Netherlands, collaborated on “Life Stories and Mental Health: The Role of Identification Processes in Theory and Interventions.” They explore the relations between narratives and mental health from a psychological perspective.

The issue also has articles from Professor Corinne Squire of the University of East London, Dr. Anneke Sools of the University of Twente, Dr. Karin Willemse of Erasmus University Rotterdam and Dr. Alexander Maas University for Humanistics/Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative fosters the development of research, theory, and practice related to narrative across various disciplines. It produces a peer-reviewed, open-access, interdisciplinary on-line journal, holds special forums on narrative concepts and approaches for faculty, students, and members of the public and organizes an annual public lecture by a well-known narrative scholar.

To visit the CIRN homepage, go to: http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/cirn/index.aspx.