Affiliated Institutions

This year, we are thrilled to have recruited several universities and other organizations to serve as affiliated institutions, which support the annual conference with financial contributions. These institutions are leading  universities, centers, and other programs from around the world devoted to the study of narrative.  

In addition to supporting a conference we all enjoy, becoming an affiliated institution is one way of highlighting the contributions your university or institution is making to the study of narrative. We think that this will be particularly appealing to emerging programs that may not necessarily be widely associated with research in narrative. Faculty members at the conference routinely advise undergraduate and Masters students on potential PhD programs, so serving as an affiliated institution can draw attention to options for graduate study that may not be part of the current conversation between faculty and students. 

If you think that your institution might be able to help sponsor a future Narrative conference in this way, talk to Dan Punday (dpunday@english.msstate.edu) for more details. Thank you to all of our affiliated institutions!

Affiliated Institutions, 2021 

• Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies

• Department of English, Mississippi State University 

• Division of Narrative Medicine, Columbia University

• Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University 

• Narrative, Culture & Community Research, Bournemouth University

• Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies, Tampere University Finland

• Paris Centre for Narrative Matters, Université de Paris

• Project Narrative, Ohio State University

• Stanford University

ACCELS - Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies, Aachen University 

The Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies (ACCELS) serves as an international platform for exchange among scholars studying the processes of understanding literature and other cultural artifacts on the basis of the cognitive sciences and empirical methods. 

The center provides a unique ground on which to pool the knowledge of experts in their different fields, to initiate collaborative and transdisciplinary research projects, and to thus further the development of cognitive and empirical literary studies. Our members teach courses in BA and MA study programs focused on cognitive and empirical approaches to literature. Most prominently, ACCELS has established itself as an initiator for internationally renowned and interdisciplinary cooperative projects, annual workshops, event series, master classes, and conferences. 

Pursuing the empirical study of literary reception in flesh-and-blood readers and theorizing reception in cognitive terms, ACCELS stands for innovative research in the humanities. Find out more at accels.rwth-aachen.de

Our Ambition:

The Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies (ACCELS) was founded in May 2019 under the guidance of Ralf Schneider, Jan Alber, and Sven Strasen and is rooted in the English Department of RWTH Aachen University (Germany). It serves as an international platform for exchange among scholars studying the processes of understanding literature and other cultural artifacts on the basis of the cognitive sciences and empirical methods. Pursuing the empirical study of literary reception in flesh-and-blood readers and theorizing reception in cognitive terms, ACCELS stands for innovative research in the humanities.

The center provides a unique ground on which to pool the knowledge of experts in their different fields, to initiate collaborative and transdisciplinary research projects, and to thus further the development of cognitive and empirical literary studies internationally. Literary reception offers routes into investigating the complex interactions between cognitive and emotional factors of comprehension, as well as the relationship between general mental dispositions and culturally specific meaning. ACCELS contributes to this field not only by conducting its own innovative, high-quality research. Its members teach courses in BA and MA study programs focused on cognitive and empirical approaches to literature. Most prominently, ACCELS has established itself as an initiator for internationally renowned and interdisciplinary cooperative projects, annual workshops, event series, and conferences. 

Our Goals:

• The center initiates and coordinates cooperative and interdisciplinary projects in empirical reception research.

• We organize lecture series, workshops, conferences and master classes with international experts working in the fields of Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies.

• The center provides access to laboratories, hardware and software for empirical research into reception processes.

• We are open to hosting recipients of research fellowships such as those awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

• The center serves as a platform for exchanging information about current and planned PhD and postdoctoral research projects in the fields of cognitive and empirical literary studies.

Our History:

Since its foundation in May 2019, ACCELS has already initiated several events that have sparked further research ideas and enhanced collaboration. Our history so far includes:

• October 2019 - January 2020: Lecture Series Empirical Approaches to Literature – Chances and Challenges

• October 2020: Annual Workshop The Study of Literature, Reading, and Cognition – Interdisciplinary Approaches, Concepts, and Terms

• November 2020 - June 2021: Event Series Pandemic Storytelling

• April 2021: Young Researcher’s Conference Narratives of Body and Mind

What’s to Come:

In the Autumn of 2021, we will start a new MA program in "Cognitive, Digital, and Empirical English Studies", which incorporates cognitive and empirical theories, models and methods – including scientific approaches and methods from Digital Humanities – more strongly than traditional courses in Literary Studies and Linguistics do. Furthermore, in October 2021 we will host our annual, international and interdisciplinary workshop, this year with a focus on Embodiment and Cognition – State of the Art, Critical Assessments, Perspectives. We are always interested in fruitful collaboration. Find out more about our team, our aims and initiatives at accels.rwth-aachen.de

Mississippi State University College of Arts and Sciences is the university’s largest and most diverse academic college, with programs ranging from hard sciences to natural and social sciences to the humanities. The college offers a vibrant atmosphere of interdisciplinary research and the chance to study narrative theory in fields such as digital media, film, food, games, literature, gender studies, medical humanities, military history, philosophy and religion.

The college offers a unique opportunity to study narrative theory through numerous annual events that bring together academic trailblazers, authors, business leaders, corporate communicators, historians, musicians and writers who share their own stories and continue the storytelling tradition of the state. 

In addition to hosting the International Conference on Narrative in 2020, the college houses two leading narrative theorists in its Department of English. Professor and Head of the Department Daniel Punday recently published Playing at Narratology: Digital Media as Narrative Theory, while Professor Kelly Marsh received accolades for her 2016 book The Submerged Plot and the Mother’s Pleasure from Jane Austen to Arundhati Roy.  Theory and Interpretation of Narrative Series. 

Other publications of note are:

• Department of Philosophy Assistant Professor Kristin Boyce’s “What Did James Show his Readers in The Wings of the Dove?” in The Henry James Review 35.1

• Department of History Associate Professor Andrew Lang’s and Andrew Bledsoe’s Upon the Fields of Battle. Essays on the Military History of America's Civil War

• Department of History Associate Professor Peter Messer’s Revolution as Reformation. Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688-1832

• Department of History Assistant Professor Courtney E. Thompson’s An Organ of Murder. Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America

• Department of English Associate Professor Jervette Ward’s Real Sister: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Black Women in Reality TV
  

Prospective graduate students interested in focusing on narrative studies are invited to write to the head of the English department Daniel Punday at dpunday@english.msstate.edu or any other core faculty (e-mail addresses readily available at https://www.msstate.edu/directory/employee). 

Division of Narrative Medicine, Columbia University

Columbia Narrative Medicine, a division within the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics of Columbia University, is proud to be an Affiliated Institution of this annual ISSN conference. Narrative medicine is a form of scholarly and clinical practice that recognizes the obligatorily narrative dimensions of the experiences of health, illness, disability, and health care and provides means toward recognition of and affiliation with those who seek and give care.

Through the pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice in the United States, narrative medicine (NM) has intensified its educational and clinical presence at Columbia and elsewhere. Since mid-March 2020, we have led a large team of NM-trained facilitators to mount free, public-access Zoom sessions for an hour of creative and reflective work designed to reduce COVID’s widespread social isolation and fear. It now meets 3-4 times per week, hosted for international participants in 5 languages. We are studying the outcomes of this amazing effort (www.narrativemedicine.blog). We provide narrative training for many clinical units—oncology, palliative care, child psychiatry, general pediatrics, internal medicine, geriatrics, family medicine, and the Medical Intensive Care Unit—giving faculty and trainees means to examine their own experiences through COVID and to accompany one another through the ordeal.

Narrative medicine continues its race and justice efforts (an outcomes research report of one anti-racism workshop will be published in the May 2021 issue of Narrative). In view of the race disparities in US prison populations, a team of faculty and students are bringing NM  pedagogy to incarcerated persons, starting at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, CA. Within the clinical space, NM is training a large inter-professional cohort of Columbia clinicians to address health care disparities, social determinants of health, and lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the health professions within an anti-racism framework of combatting white supremacy and addressing systemic and structural racism in our own health center.

The Division directs a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program on the Arts & Sciences campus of Columbia and a Certification of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine for clinically oriented training. We are piloting an inter-disciplinary effort to train humanities doctoral candidates and clinicians how to teach the medical humanities. If successful, this pilot will become a Certificate Program for doctoral candidates in the humanities and health professionals who hope to teach medical humanities in their future careers. Columbia’s medical school has intensified its decades-long NM curriculum with an expanded  Narrative & Social Medicine Scholarly Project and a new Narrative Medicine StudioLab for faculty and students to gather as makers and students of the arts and humanities and for researching the outcomes of their inclusion in health care settings.

In partnership with Oxford University Press, the Division has recently inaugurated a Narrative Medicine Book Series. We continue our monthly Narrative Medicine Rounds with now virtual presentations from artists, scholars, clinicians, writers, engineers, and musicians (see website for schedules). Finally, the Division has created an ambitious Continuing Narrative Education program for the alumnx of their Master’s Program and have launched Narrative Medicine International to cohere the growing global circle of education, training, and practice in this still young and very vibrant field.

For more information, visit www.narrativemedicine.org.

One of very few narrative research centres based in the UK, we define narrative very broadly and are concerned with examining it as a structuring mechanism across multiple media and disciplines. We are also interested in exploring how narrative interacts with and impacts on cultures and communities.  As an interdisciplinary research centre we bring together a range of diverse approaches and methodologies from members across Bournemouth University. We host monthly research seminars and have organised several international conferences and symposia on topics including Location-based Storytelling and Nonhuman narratives. 

The Centre Head is Professor Bronwen Thomas and the Deputy Head is Dr Julia Round.  

Current staff and research student areas of interest and expertise are listed below and we welcome applications from prospective students wishing to pursue research in these areas. For further information please contact Bournemouth University’s Doctoral College. Staff from NCCR also teach on several MA courses at BU, including MA English and Literary Media and MA Creative Writing and Publishing. 

• Digital writing and reading

• Life writing and Autofiction

• Comics/sequential art

• Medical Humanities

• Memory Studies

• Book history and publishing

• Fans and online communities

Led by NCCR’s Dr Jim Pope, Bournemouth University is home to the annual New Media Prize which showcases the latest innovations in electronic literature, interactive fiction and digital journalism. Current funded projects include DRIVE, a research network on digital reading bringing together researchers, stakeholders and practitioners from Africa, the US and Europe led by Professor Bronwen Thomas. Collaborative publications include Real Lives, Celebrity Stories: Narratives of Ordinary and Extraordinary People edited by Bronwen Thomas and Julia Round (Bloomsbury 2014) and The Routledge Companion to Literary Media co-edited by Bronwen Thomas, Julia Round and Astrid Ensslin (forthcoming 2022).

Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies (2014–) at Tampere University advances the internationally renowned and interdisciplinary work that our team in literary studies and social sciences has been doing for more than two decades. Narrare brings together researchers in literary studies, social sciences, game studies, media and journalism, history, philosophy, education, psychology, health sciences, information systems research, political science and administrative studies. The centre’s essential aim is to develop consistent narrative-theoretical methodology for all disciplines working with narrative.

Our central research areas are:

• interdisciplinary narrative theory and analysis

• convention and invention in narratives

• narrative agency and positioning

• narrative, well-being, and dangers of storytelling.

Narrare hosts a range of research projects on and around the main foci. Since 2020, Narrare organizes an open online lecture series to present and discuss contemporary narrative studies as well as to bring together those who study narratives at Tampere University and elsewhere. The series invites anyone to listen and discuss the topics presented, and the aim is an open, multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories and the state of research on narratives. 

More information on projects, publications, lectures and other activities: https://research.tuni.fi/narrare/ and https://www.facebook.com/narrarecentre/

Contact information: Director of Narrare Mari Hatavara (mari.hatavara@tuni.fi), Vice Director of Narrare Matti Hyvärinen, Coordinator Anna Kuutsa (anna.kuutsa@tuni.fi)

Centre et réseau de recherches dédiés à l’étude des pratiques et des théories du récit Awardee of the IdEx Université de Paris 2019 Call for Projects Dynamique Recherche 

OUR HISTORY

The project to create a Paris Centre for Narrative Matters is the result of a collaborative effort carried out over nearly three years between Sylvie Patron, maîtresse de conférences habilitée à diriger des recherches at the Université Paris Diderot, now Université de Paris, and Brian Schiff, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at the American University of Paris, involving the conception, organization, and publication of two international conferences.

1. Narrative Matters 2012: Life and Narrative, American University of Paris, May 29th–June 1st, 2012;

2. Narrative Matters 2014: Narrative Knowing/Récit et Savoir, Université Paris Diderot/Université de Paris, June 23rd-27th, 2014.

The project will be based on the members of the scientific committees of these conferences, who will draw up an activity program, and on the network formed by the conference participants, who will develop and perpetuate these activities on the international level. The goal is to exploit the research potential revealed by the success of these events by drawing together currently dispersed energies and competencies.

The Paris Centre for Narrative Matters was created in September 2014, and its work began in the form of a seminar organized alternately by the Université Paris Diderot/Université de Paris and the American University of Paris. It was consolidated by the signing of a convention for student exchanges between the two institutions, and three project submissions, including the Dynamique Recherche Call for Projects of the IdEx Université de Paris.

OUR AXES OF RESEARCH 

The major thematic axes that will be developed in the Centre in the first instance, arise out of the work of the Narrative Matters 2012 and Narrative Matters 2014 conferences:

• Interactions between life and narrative

• Relationship between narrative and knowledge

• Narrative identity

• Narrative care, narrative medicine

• Narrative hermeneutics

• History of knowledge and epistemology
  

The Centre will welcome all initiatives to create workshops, conferences and other activities pertaining to these themes.

OUR AMBITION

Over the past decades in the English-speaking world, but also in Germany, Austria, Nordic countries, and so on, there has been a renewal of studies and research on narrative, in all its forms and all the varieties of its functions:

1. What has been called in the English-speaking world the “narrative turn,” which has placed the issue of narrative at the center not only of historical, anthropological, psychological and psychoanalytical thought, but also juridical and even medical thought;

2. The revival of narratology (the theory of literary narrative) in a plural and diversified form, which earned it the name of “narratologies” or “postclassical narratology.”

The proliferation of works and papers in the field of narrative research raises a certain number of questions, including the following: Is the meeting between the disciplines of the narrative turn and postclassical narratology purely circumstantial, or is it able to produce true interdisciplinary interactions?

Today, the Paris Centre for Narrative Matters wants to go beyond the state of the art:

• by promoting dialogue between narratology and narrative inquiry, and more generally between the social sciences and the humanities on narrative matters; 

• by practicing an active and proactive interdisciplinarity, but one which is also attentive to disciplinary specificities and history;

• by considering Anglophone and Francophone authors together, encouraging bilingual projects, translations, and the international mobility of researchers;

• by creating relationships between research and other professions concerned with issues of narrative (psychological support, social work, teaching, etc.).
  

OUR OBJECTIVES

• to develop and disseminate research work based on the interaction between the disciplines of the narrative turn and postclassical narratology;

• to bring together young researchers and experienced ones, for example through an invitation program for researchers;

• to offer assistance to these researchers in preparing research projects, whether French or European;

• to ensure the coordination of their research work, and the dissemination of results through its activities and publications;

• to compare the pedagogical experiences, to facilitate and intensify the exchanges between the partner institutions on the educational level;

• to organize activities among various audiences.

The centre will constitute both a place for scientific exchange and a space for developing projects, in order to become a key player in the field of narrative practices and theories.

Project Narrative (PN) is a cluster of faculty, visiting scholars, and graduate students at the Ohio State University dedicated to producing and promoting state-of- the-art research and teaching in narrative studies. Project Narrative has twelve core faculty across four departments: Katra Byram (German), Angus Fletcher (English), Jared Gardner (English), Leigh Gilmore (English), Sarah Johnston (Classics and Comparative Studies), Brian McHale (English), Sean O’Sullivan (English), James Phelan (English), Amy Shuman (English), Robyn Warhol (English),  Julia Watson (Comparative Studies), and Karen Winstead (English).  Collectively, this group has expertise in:

• Narrative in fiction, lifewriting, poetry, and drama

• Cognitive, rhetorical, formalist, feminist and queer, historicist, and other approaches to narrative

• comics and graphic narrative

• television narrative

• film narrative

• human rights and narrative

• narrative and ethics

• race, gender, sexuality, nationality and narrative

• disability and narrative

• narrative and medicine

• everyday narratives

• narrative and postmodernism

Prospective graduate students interested in focusing on narrative studies are invited to write to the current Director, James Phelan Phelan.1@osu.edu, or any of the core faculty (e-mail addresses readily available at osu.edu/findpeople)

Project Narrative annually offers a Summer Institute, and we are currently accepting applications for the 2021 program on Narrative Theory and Social Justice, June 21 to July 2, co-directed by James Phelan and Robyn Warhol. The Institute, which will be conducted on-line, will establish a dialogue among primary narratives across a range of media by artists of color, critical race theory, and narrative theory. For more information, go to https://projectnarrative.osu.edu/2021-PNSI