Narrative Now: Recent Episodes
Narrative Now
Narrative Now is a podcast series that is produced by the Narrative Network in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. It is hosted by Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn. The podcast will cover both ‘how-to’ episodes focusing on different approaches to working with narrative and storytelling as well as ‘what’s new’ episodes that dive into new trends in narrative research.
In this episode we speak to Dr Tyne Daile Sumner, a literary scholar at the Australian National University. Tyne is currently conducting an ARC-DECRA project called ‘Beyond Big Brother: New Narratives for Understanding Surveillance’ where she looks at how new forms of digital surveillance are represented in literature. We spoke to Tyne to hear more about this project and find out how classic literary narratives - such as George Orwell's 1984 - and new surveillance novels alert us to trends in the present and help us imagine the future
In this episode we speak to Dr Mariam Tokhi and Dr Fiona Reilly, both clinicians who are also affiliated with the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health sciences. Mariam and Fiona are both involved in Australia’s first university subject in Narrative Medicine and they share what they are trying to teach students in this course. We also speak to them about the role of stories in health care and what allowing room for telling and listening to stories of both patients and staff can bring.
In this episode we speak to radio producer and podcaster Miyuki Jokiranta about audio stories. We discuss the challenges of capturing people’s attention via their ears as well as the seductive power of conventional modes of storytelling. Miyuki introduces us to the ethical imperative to rethink how we structure narratives and who we centre as storytellers. This ‘how to’ episode offers insights into the process of planning and creating stories for audio. For an extra feature of Miyuki’s list of listens see the Narrative Network website.
For this episode we spoke to Edwina Shaw, who teaches creative writing in schools, libraries and at the University of Queensland, and also is a writer herself. Edwina’s work focuses on the healing power of stories and in this episode we explore how storytelling can be a way of working through trauma. We focus on Edwina’s creative writing sessions with people who grew up in out-of-home care and hear about how imaginative and creative writing exercises hold the potential to tell one’s story in a different way. Edwina also addresses the extensive work that goes into making these sessions safe for everyone.
Please note: the episode does contain references to traumatic life events that may be confronting. If listeners need to seek support, we recommend the following services:
Lifeline (AUS)
Beyond Blue (AUS)
Lifeline (US)
NHS overview of services (UK)
For this episode we spoke to Professor Sophie Woodward, University of Manchester, about her work with object-based methods. We asked Sophie why objects are so good at prompting people to tell stories, and what it is that we can learn from these stories. Sophie took us on a tour from her earlier work on fashion objects to her current project on dormant things we keep in our homes. We also hear about a storytelling toolkit, developed together with a community organisation, which takes these methods outside the university’s walls and instead puts them to work to facilitate positive connections between members through storytelling.
In this episode we speak to Arthur Frank about his life’s work on narrative. Frank is an Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada, and has won many accolades for his work on illness narratives and ethics of care. We discuss Frank’s most well-known work The Wounded Storyteller (1995), now a central text in the narrative canon, and why this book became so influential. We also chat about Frank’s new book, King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations, where he coins the term ‘vulnerable reading’, a useful concept for narrative researchers in challenging times, and hear his views on the future of narrative studies.
In this episode we speak to Rose Barrowcliffe about changes to how First Nations narratives are collected and archived in settler-colonial countries like Australia. Rose is a Butchulla doctoral researcher at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia and the inaugural First Nations Archives Advisor to the Queensland State Archives. In this role, she has initiated work on new metadata practices, outreach, and self-determination. Rose's doctoral research focuses on the Kgari (Fraser Island) Research Archive and uses both visual and audio narratives and family stories. The episode offers a fascinating conversation about silences, visibility, surveillance, and what comes to count as ‘valuable’ records in a nation’s story about its past.
For this ‘What’s new’ episode we spoke to sociologist Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves, Monash University, and Dr Josephine Wilson, a Perth-based writer and scholar at Murdoch University, about their recent collaboration. Barbara and Josephine brought together research narratives and creative narratives to experiment with how to best convey the experiences of loneliness experienced by older Australians living in aged care. In our conversation with Barbara and Josephine we discussed how they came together over this shared interest and how their collaboration worked. They also read one of the compelling stories that came out of this project, and offered advice on how to forge ethical working relationships between academics and creatives.
In this ‘What’s New’ episode of Narrative Now we speak to Finnish narratologists Maria Mäkelä and Samuli Björninen, Tampere University, about their innovative research project named ‘Dangers of Narrative’. Taking a critical approach to the proliferation of storytelling in the public sphere, especially the use of personal narratives, Mäkelä and Björninen devised a new method utilising social media to invite the public to submit examples of such dubious uses of stories. In this episode we ask what they see as the problems in the value ascribed to personal stories and the challenges that arose during the research.
In this ‘what’s new’ episode of Narrative Now we spoke to Arlie Hochschild, Emerita Professor at University of California, Berkeley and a world-renowned sociologist of emotion. We discussed her widely celebrated 2016 book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, based on her fieldwork with Tea Party Republicans in the US, and specifically the idea of ‘deep stories’ she develops in the book. To open up this concept for narrative researchers, we asked Hochschild how the idea of deep stories came about, what characterises it, as well as how we might work with deep stories.
In this ‘what's new’ episode of Narrative Now we spoke to Dr Yves Rees about their book All About Yves: Notes on a Transition (2021), just about to be published with Allen & Unwin when this conversation was recorded in August 2021. The memoir recounts the experience of gender transition, and in a move that challenges conventions about memoirs it is written at the age of 30. We chatted to Yves about what it was like to write the book, including some of the methodological and ethical considerations, for example, about privacy when writing about living people, as well as working with life narrative in a way that raises critical questions about what a life narrative should look like.
You can purchase All About Yves in online and in all good bookstores.
In this ‘what’s new’ episode we speak to Emeritus Professor of Sociology Ken Plummer, a legend of narrative research, about his influential research on stories, where the field is at now, and what might be its future. In this quite warm and personal conversation, we discussed the work Ken has done with narrative and stories across the span of his career, from the 1960s to the present; beginning with his first two books, Documents of Life and Telling Sexual Stories, up until his most recent works, Narrative Power and Critical Humanism.
In this ‘how to’ episode of Narrative Now we explore a question that may cross the minds of many narrative scholars, that is, how to include the author or researcher in the story that is being told. How we that answer question might also depend on what story is being told. We speak to two oral historians, Carla Pascoe Leahy and Sarah Rood, about their unique approach to this question.
In this ‘what’s new’ episode of Narrative Now we dive into collective narratives. We talk to three researchers – Imogen Carr, Julia Hurst and Dave McDonald – who have three very different takes on what collective narratives are and can be helpful for, looking at how collectives feature in their own work. We also explore some of the challenges and opportunities that are part and parcel of working with collective narratives.
In this first episode of Narrative Now we explore how to story a book. Working with narrative data provides a wealth of opportunities but also presents the challenge of choosing what or which parts of the stories to focus on and how to curate this story. Storying a book based on narrative data also poses ethical questions around ownership and audience. Ultimately, in this episode, we ask which stories are ‘good stories’?
In this very brief introduction to the podcast we speak a little bit about what Narrative Now is intended to be and what you will encounter in this podcast series.