Sharing stories: The Saskatchewan Aboriginal Storytelling project

The Saskatchewan Aboriginal Storytelling project is a month-long event in Saskatchewan, Canada, which celebrates the lives, histories, practices and cultures of First Nations, Métis, Inuit and non-Status peoples through storytelling. The Library Services for Saskatchewan Aboriginal Peoples committee oversees the project and employs a coordinator, who applies for grants, coordinates the project’s guidelines, and is the contact for site funding and event reporting. Since its launch in 2004, the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Storytelling project has grown significantly and has effectively promoted traditional storytelling, supported a network of Aboriginal storytellers, and helped to create stronger relationships between Aboriginal peoples and libraries. The Saskatchewan Aboriginal Storytelling project is a dynamic methodological and theoretical model for decolonizing library spaces, programmes and collections through celebrating Aboriginal oral traditions.

Doubling the fantasy, adapting the reel: Entertaining transmediation as a collaborative narrative strategy

Can we move fan participation and the co-creation of storylines outside the sphere of the culture industry to better understand their potential functions for constructing individual subjectivity and empowering social change? With an attention to experiences of migration, exile and detainment, and through close readings of documentary The Wolfpack (2015), HBO’s bilingual horror comedy series Los Espookys (2019) and Manuel Puig’s novel, El beso de la mujer araña (1976), I argue that it is necessary to move beyond a speaker–audience dialectic, as in traditional storytelling, and towards transmediated activity, where static or linear temporal and spatial orders are both reproduced and subverted. By converging performance studies with border studies and phenomenology, this contribution counters assumptions about submissive viewership while unpacking the political utility of entertainment. Ultimately, ‘Doubling the fantasy, adapting the reel’ challenges what it means to be a ‘storyteller’ and what constitutes a useful ‘story’ in the context of political advocacy and activism.

A Good Man is a Trickster to Find

In my presentation, I will demonstrate the contrast between the pioneer of the Southern Grotesque, Flannery O’Connor, and her famous story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” with Taylor’s use of the gothic in his YA novel. O’Connor adapted her version of the gothic from her predecessors such as Shelley and Poe. But she veers away from the creation of a fantastical monster tradition of the Romantics to drive the focus of the “monstrous” to the very human but harmful behaviors of her characters. Similarly, Taylor’s narrative does away with the over-the-top fantasy of the Romantic tradition and instead chooses to set the narrative in a realistic space with relevant characters. The difference between O’Connor and Taylor is that in O’Connor’s Southern Gothic the setting is the pinnacle of her story while Taylor’s Indigeneity shines through with his humor, traditional storytelling, and orality in his narrative. Differences aside, it is clear that the motive of each text is a call for social reform in O’Connor’s criticism of the social structure of the American South and in Taylor’s criticism of colonization.

Egypt’s dispersed heritage: Multi-directional storytelling through comic art

This paper responds to a need to address the colonial history of collections of Egyptian archaeology and to find new ways in which Egyptian audiences can assume greater agency in such a process. The ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage’ project presents a model of engagement whereby foreign museum collections become the inspiration for Egyptians to express their own feelings about the removal of their heritage abroad using idioms and traditional storytelling of cultural relevance to them. A series of online comics confronting contentious heritage issues, including the display of mummified human remains, eugenics, looting and destruction, is discussed. It is argued that this approach is not only more relatable for Egyptian communities, but moreover provides space for the development of grass-roots critique of heritage practices, both in the UK and in Egypt. Museums have a responsibility to take on board these critiques, curating not just objects but relationships forged amongst them in historical and contemporary society.

Social network documentary and its aesthetic metamorphosis: reflections from a practice-led research

This article employs a practice-led methodology to offer a creative examination of the digital trends, online practices, and shifting aesthetics of political documentary as it migrates in the interstices of social media. At the centre of this research is the production and circulation of Facebook-native microdocumentaries, labelled under the rubric of compact cinematics and radical videos. As a networked platform, Facebook affords opportunities for media experimentation and allows filmmakers to innovate political and sociable contents. I argue that documentaries circulated on Facebook, particularly those with social change outreach, need to undergo an aesthetic adjustment to respond to ongoing ruptures in traditional storytelling and to address the shifting consumption modes of audiences online.

»A Dream of a Dream«

Artikelbeginn:[English title and abstract below] In Franz Hohlers Tschipo (1978), dem ersten Teil einer Trilogie, erlebt ein Schweizer Junge Abenteuer auf seltsamen Inseln. Und in Maggie Stiefvaters Serien The Raven Cycle (2012 – 2016) und The Dreamer Trilogy (2019 – ) bekämpft ein amerikanischer junger Erwachsener mit Namen Ronan Lynch magische Gefahren. Was haben Tschipo und Ronan gemeinsam? Eine seltsame Gabe: Von ihren Träumen bleibt am Morgen etwas zurück. »A Dream of a Dream«Dreaming as a Metafictional Device in Children’s and Young Adult Literature This article analyses the relationship between dreaming, art and identity in Franz Hohler’s Tschipo (1978) and Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle (2012 – 2016) and The Dreamer Trilogy (2019 – ). At the centres of their fictional universes lies the fantastic ability of specific characters to take things out of their dreams; an ability which is both a plot element and a narrative principle. In Tschipo, dreaming is used in analogy to storytelling, with the storyteller inventing worlds that are so vibrant that the audience is unable to discern what is ›real‹ and what is ›just‹ invented or dreamed. In Stiefvater’s books, the character of the dreamer is revealed to be a kind of artist who thrives on the thrill of creation and transgression. In all the texts, the concept of taking things out of dreams is transgressive on two levels: Formally, it is used to subvert traditional storytelling and to question the role of the narrator. In terms of plot, it is employed in order to articulate nonnormative identities, lifestyles and desires. By using dreaming as a central narrative device, Tschipo, The Raven Cycle and The Dreamer Trilogy are therefore highly metafictional, revealing that literature addressed to younger audiences participates in a cultural conversation about fact and fiction, and draws on narrative strategies similar to those employed in literature addressed to adults.

“Speak your word and break!”

By tracing an alternative aesthetics of decomposition and fragmentation, this article offers a new understanding of the literary and poetological strategies Knut Hamsun uses to create a disintegrating text cosmos wherein the idea of ‘creation out of nothing’ (creatio ex nihilo) is one key to artistic originality. The article explores the interdependence of different notions of decline and shows that the image of the (biblical) fall is particularly important to the poetics and aesthetic structure of Hamsun’s Hunger (Sult, 1890). Around 1900, ideas of wholeness crumble, a decomposition which is reflected in the well-established philosophical and anthropological experiments of Nietzsche, Bourget and Simmel. Taking some of their aesthetic assumptions as a point of departure, the present paper argues that Hamsun’s novel offers an aesthetic variation on the decline of unity-based concepts, ranging from the subject to religious belief as well as to traditional storytelling.

Digital Storytelling or Traditional Storytelling to develop EFL Students’ Oral Communication?

The present study investigated the effect of storytelling versus digital storytelling on developing fifth year EFL primary school pupils’ oral communication performance. The study adopted the quasi-experimental design. Sixty pupils of Dr. Ahmed Zewail primary School were distributed into two experimental groups. One group served as the first experimental group (n=30) who was taught in digital storytelling, whereas the second experimental group (n=30) was taught in traditional storytelling. The experiment lasted for six weeks. The instruments of the study included an oral communication skills test, an oral communication checklist, a semi-structured interview and a reflective log. They were approved by a panel of jury. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the first experimental group and that of the second one on the post-administration of the oral communication test for the first experimental group. Moreover, results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the responses of the first experimental group and that of the second one on the post-administration of the semi-structured interview favoring the first experimental group. As such, it was concluded that storytelling versus digital storytelling had a positive effect on developing fifth year EFL primary pupils’ oral communication performance.

Who doesn't love a good story? — What neuroscience tells about how we respond to narratives

Can we really say what type of story has impact on us, and what type of story does not? Evidence suggests that we can. But we need to better understand the way that stories work on us, at a neural and empathetic level, and better understand the ways that the elements of stories, such as structure and metaphor work. By combining scientific research with the deeper wisdom of traditional storytelling we have both a deep knowledge married to scientific evidence — which can be very powerful tools for science communicators.