P a s t   E v e n t s

2008

September:
Thursdays: 4th, 11th 18th and 24th.

Narrative Analysis workshops.
Time: 4:30 - 6:30pm
Place: Rendevous Hotel Bar, Flinders St. Melbourne (next door to VU City campus, between Elizabeth and Queen Sts.)

22nd July 2008 

'Personal Identities - Cultural Stories'
A symposium of narrative works-in-progress highlighting analytic approaches.

Guest presenter:
Professor Corinne Squire
Co-Director,
Centre for Narrative Research
School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies
University of East London.

Melbourne

5th Feb - 24th March

Narrative Research Methods
in the social sciences

a 12 session course with

Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman
(Boston U)

2007

Narrative Research Convivium

9 August - 18 October

Approaches to Narrative Research
Methods Workshops and Symposia

led by

Melbourne: 29th Jan - 2nd Feb

Canberra: 13th - 16th Feb

Brisbane: 20th-21st Feb

2006

keynote by

Melbourne: April

h o m e

a b o u t     u s

m e l b o u r n e    g r o u p

p a s t    e v e n t s

2010

Conference - Melbourne July 8th - 9th

Losing the Plot: grappling with Narrative Complexity

There appears to be a deep desire, among both story tellers and narrative researchers, for coherence in the narratives they perform and analyse.  Yet it is also true that stories are often far from coherent.  Human life is often perplexing and contradictory, incomplete and ambiguous.  Recent work in narrative analysis argues that too much emphasis on coherence may well under-value the complexities and contradictions of human stories and story-telling.  Disruptions to lives, such as migration, illness and trauma may lead to ‘broken narratives’ that can be fragmented, silenced or unspeakable.  What challenges does this pose to concepts of narrative coherence?  When we shift our focus from the internal consistencies and ordering of plot, what emerges when we explore the multiple intersections between stories and their performances, audiences, and cultural genres?  Moreover, how do we, as researchers, work with these tensions in our data between incoherence and coherence, between story and performance, between cultural forms and personal experience without getting lost in these contradictions?

Papers are sought from across the disciplines that consider the following themes:

• The theoretical and /or methodological challenges of complex and incoherent narratives
• Working with ‘broken narratives’ – illness, trauma, migration, loss
• Tracing incoherence, ambiguity and multiplicity in everyday stories and story-telling
• Working with the complexities of collective memory and biographies
• Producing coherence and incoherence, for example through dialogical performances
• Producing counter narratives

For further details contact Ruth Ballardie ruthballardie@optusnet.com.au