L
a t e s t N
e w s
Melbourne 2009
Mon 2nd - Sun 8th Feb 2009
Summer Writing Retreat at Mount Hotham
Mon 9th - Fri 13th Feb
Five day Intensive course in Narrative Research Methods with Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman
Time:
9:30 - 5:30 daily
Place: Victoria
University City Campus, Flinders St. Melbourne (between Elizabeth and
Queen Sts.)
2008:
Melbourne
Thursday
28th
Aug 2008
General
planning meeting -
to discuss developments and future events for Narrative Network Australia.
Time: 4:30 - 6:30pm
Place: Rendevous Hotel Bar, Flinders St. Melbourne
(next door to VU City campus, between Elizabeth and Queen Sts.)
The purpose of this meeting is to discuss organisational developments, including incorportion as a not-for-profit organisation, to plan future events and to consider possible collaborations. All people interested in narrative research are welcome to come along.
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.)
These will offer semi-formal presentations of narrative data, with two presenters each session, followed by an extended discussion involving all participants, in a supportive and open atmosphere. All are welcome to attend. People wanting to present data should contact:
Ruth
Ballardie ruth.ballardie@med.monash.edu.au
or
Professor Elaine Martin elaine.martin@vu.edu.au
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.
Registrations
close Monday 14th July.
Registration details and
form - Download word.doc here
Melbourne
5th Feb - 24th March
Narrative
Research Methods
in the social sciences
a 12 session course with
Professor
Catherine Kohler Riessman
(Boston U)
5th
and 12th Feb
back
by popular demand!!!
Writing
workshop
Christine's 7 handy hints
for powerful writing
(in conjunction with the Narrative Research course)
a 2 session workshop with
Christine Gillespie (VU)
Wollongong
University
22nd
and 23rd
Febuary 2008
Narrative Inquiry: Breathing Life into Talk, Text and the Visual - a conference
Keynote
Speaker:
Prof. Catherine Kohler Riessman
(Boston University)
..................................................................................
'Personal
Identities - Cultural Stories'
A
Symposium of Narrative-based works-in-progress
highlighting analytical approaches.
Guest Presenter:
Professor
Corrine Squire
Co-Director,
Centre for Narrative Research
School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies
University of East London.
Date:
Tuesday, 22nd July 2008
Time: 9.30pm until 5.00pm
Venue: Victoria University City Campus
Level 16, Room
16.10
300 Flinders Street, Melbourne.
Call
for papers:
The 1960’s slogan ‘THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL’ declared
the significance of the relationship between personal story-telling and
public culture. Forty years on, this call has been incorporated into the
Western lexicon, but whilst the personal / political connection is now
widely accepted, it is also rigorously explored and questioned. Personal
narratives operate in complex ways. There is no seamless welding between
personal experience and cultural background. Rather, personal stories
are forged and flow in vectors around and between personal experience,
identity and culture. The idea of cultural genre as an organising frame
in the creation of a coherent personal story is certainly one way to work.
In adopting this approach, however, we immediately raise further questions
about the salience, significance and consequences of other aspects of
individual experience and story that may remain outside of a particular
story-line. Furthermore, personal and cultural experience may themselves
feed back, and alter cultural genres. How are these processes addressed
in research?
Papers are invited that inform these issues, or raise others, concerning
narrative analysis and the relationship between the personal and cultural.
The papers should be presented as ‘works in progress’, with
issues and problems explicitly framed and offered for discussion by all
participants. Papers should take no longer than 20 minutes to present
and will be followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
Abstracts
of 200 words should be emailed to:
Professor Elaine Martin ( Elaine.Martin@vu.edu.au )
BY: Friday 27rd June, 2008.
Registrations close Monday 14th July, 2008
...............
Narrative
Research Methods
in the social sciences
a 12 session course with
Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman
The
course
Narrative
theory and practice is reshaping qualitative inquiry in virtually every
area of social science and the professions. This is not surprising for
stories are at the heart of human and social meaning making - and meaning
making by individuals and communities, by organizations, institutions
and nations can be insightfully explored by an analysis of these narratives.
This course will assist those with an interest in narrative inquiry to learn more about the development and significance of narrative as a research method and to explore for themselves how narratives might be harnessed as research data.
The course begins with a review of what has been called ‘the narrative turn’ in social science research. It then moves on to explore how participants might transform storytelling relevant to their own work into research method. Four specific approaches to the analysis of narrative are explored: thematic, structural, dialogic and visual.
A major challenge for those exploring narrative enquiry is the development of an understanding and a commitment to the validity of narrative as a research method. Attention to this question and to the validity and trustworthiness of narrative research inquiry is an important aspect of this course.
The expectation is that participants will draw on specific readings and on class discussion to gain a deeper understanding of narrative research and that they will work with, critically analyse and present narrative text relevant to their own research the course. The final two weeks will take the form of a ‘master class’ with participants presenting their work for supportive critique by Professor Riessman and by each other.
Participant numbers are limited to 25 to ensure students receive adequate personal attention.
Professor
Cathy Riessman:
For the first three months of 2008, Professor Cathy Riessman will be a
visiting scholar of Victoria University, Melbourne, and of ‘Narrative
Network Australia’. Cathy is an acclaimed teacher as well as an
internationally renowned researcher. She has been called the ‘mother’
of narrative research. In this course she brings together her expertise
as teacher and researcher to assist Australian researchers and research
students who are relatively inexperienced to explore and develop expertise
in narrative as a social science research method.
Professor Riessman’s own research examines interrupted lives, where events have disrupted expectations of continuity. Over a long career she has studied and compared the narrative accounts that women and men develop to make sense of biographical disruptions (chronic illness, divorce, and infertility). She examines personal accounts as stories that can illuminate the social sources of "private troubles" by drawing connections between biography and society, revealing how identities are constructed narratively. Her research builds on and extends recent interdisciplinary developments, and the burgeoning field of narrative theory in the social sciences and humanities. Professor Riessman has authored three books and numerous articles and book chapters. She teaches frequently in Europe and her research has taken her into Asia as well as across Europe and North America. Over the past five years has developed a relationship with colleagues in Australia and New-Zealand and during 2006 she was a Visiting Professor at Curtin University, Western Australia.
Her much awaited new book, Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences, published by Sage, will appear late in 2007 and will be launched in February, during her visit to Melbourne.
Course
Outline and Dates:
This is an intensive course with a strong practical aspect. Participants
will meet for two hours, twice a week for four weeks. During these four
weeks it is also essential that participants take the time to read and
reflect on a range of selected readings. There will then be a break of
two weeks when participants will work on the analysis of their work. The
final four sessions will be the ‘master’ classes with participants
presenting and getting supportive feedback on this work.
The sessions will run during February and March, 2008 on Tuesdays and Thursday 4.00pm - 6.30pm. They will be held at the Queen Street, City Campus of Victoria University, Melbourne.
Christine's
seven handy hints
for powerful writing.
A course of two workshops
Christine
Gillespie
Victoria University
Date:
Tues 5th February AND Tues 12th February
Time: 12:00pm – 3:00pm (followed by high tea)
Venue: Victoria University
Queen Street, City Campus (Melbourne)
In these two workshops, Christine Gillespie will model community writing
workshops in which participants - who may have little or no experience
- write with confidence, speed and energy. The technique was used as a
successful tool for academics and post-graduate students for freeing up
‘creative’ writing in a workshop at the ‘Approaches
to Narrative Research’ symposium held in January 2007. It was agreed
at the time that this confident, energetic approach could be useful for
bringing more
passion and power to self-reflexive and more academic forms of writing.
Following numerous requests for another writing workshop, Christine has
generously agreed to provide a more intensive two session workshop, to
complement the Narrative Research Methods coursework offered by Professor
Catherine Riessman. In particular, they can be used to inspire strong
writing for the individual narrative analysis exercise.
Please Note: this course is open to everyone,
regardless of whether or not you are participating in the Narrative Research
Methods course.
Bio:
Christine Gillespie has just submitted her PhD thesis at Victoria University.
It consists of a novel and an exegesis. In the last ten years, she has
written short fiction, published in France, Malaysia and India, as well
as in local literary magazines and in The Age newspaper. In addition,
Christine has run creative writing workshops in community settings, often
undertaken by stART Community Arts. Groups who have used her writing techniques
include women with breast cancer; drug-addicted young people and their
families, as well as refugees on TPVs.
Christine also mentored creative writers from these settings to develop
their written work for the recent publications: Heartsongs in the key
of C: women writing about breast cancer and Armed with chocolate frogs:
living with advanced breast cancer. Both titles are published by Kate
Carey Productions, Melbourne. 2006. Christine is currently working with
Professor Elaine Martin of Victoria University and Bob Elworthy, Vietnam
Veterans Association of Victoria, to begin a narrative research community
writing project for veterans.
The
workshops:
This is a short course of two sessions.
Cost:
$35.00
this cost is heavily subsidised, so we cannot offer further reductions).
Narrative
Inquiry: Breathing Life into Talk,
Text and the Visual
22 –
23 February 2008
Wollongong University
Chair: Dr Pauline Lysaght
Increased
interest in narrative theory and practice is evident in virtually every
area of the human sciences and related professions. From a narrative perspective,
stories record, challenge, shape and propel our lives—they give
shape to the meaning of experiences in our lives. Typically, narrative
scholars focus on spoken and written accounts in order to understand and
represent the experiences of individuals, communities, organisations and
nations. More recently, a turn to the visual has meant that researchers
are also working with visual imagery and technologies towards the same
ends.
Whether through the spoken word, text or the visual, a narrative approach
to stories and their analysis provides an important platform for understanding
the experiences of others and for giving voice to those who are marginalised.
Keynote
Speaker:
Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman
Research Professor of Sociology, Boston College
Professor Emerita, Boston University
http://www2.bc.edu/~riessman/
This conference will provide those with an interest in narrative to gain an overview of the approach and its significance as a research method. Invitees will include experts in the field, early career researchers and postgraduate students, as well as those who simply wish to explore this powerful approach to understanding the experiences of others. Participants will be encouraged to explore the ways in which the stories they have gathered, whether spoken, written or visual, can be understood and analysed from a narrative perspective. A key objective of the conference is to produce a monograph reflecting the wide range of applications that a narrative approach encourages.
For further
information or to send an expression of interest please email:
Dr Gillian Vogl
gillian@uow.edu.au
Funded by the Faculty of Education, CYIRC (Children and Youth Interdisciplinary Research Group) and LNL (Learning and the Learner) at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
2007:
Narrative Research Convivium 2007
a facilitated reading/discussion group
Melbourne - 9 August to 18 October
Approaches
to Narrative Research
symposium and workshop series
with Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman-(Boston
College)
Melbourne - 29th Jan to 2nd Feb 2007
Confessions:
Confounding Narrative and Ethics
A
Symposium
with Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman-(Boston College)
Brisbane - 21st to 22nd Feb 2007
2006:
Narrative
as Research Symposium
Melbourne, April,
2006
Keynote speaker:
Dr
Maria Tamboukou
Centre for Narrative Research (UEL)