Project Narrative Summer Institute: July 10 – July 21, 2017
The 2017 Project Narrative Summer Institute:
PNSI is a two-week workshop on the Ohio State University Columbus campus that offers faculty and advanced graduate students in any discipline the opportunity for an intensive study of core concepts and issues in narrative theory. The focus for summer 2017 will be Queer and Feminist Narrative Theories: Interdisciplinary Methodologies.
Institute Co-Directors:
PNSI 2017 will be co-directed by OSU faculty members Robyn Warhol, Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor and Chair of English, and Amy Shuman, Professor of English, Anthropology, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at OSU (DISCO). The Project Narrative Summer Institute draws on the co-directors’ interdisciplinary training and research experience to recombine foundational queer and feminist texts in social sciences, literary theory, and narratology, with the goal of developing new transdisciplinary methodologies for teaching and research. Scholars in all humanities and social science fields are welcome.
To Apply:
Applicants should send a current CV, a short description of the proposed project (no longer than a single-spaced page), and one letter of recommendation to Project Narrative by May 1, 2017. Applications will be reviewed promptly after the deadline. If, in order to meet funding deadlines, applicants need an earlier decision, the co-directors will consider special requests for early action.
Applications can be emailed to projectnarrative@osu.edu or sent by post to the following address:
421 Denney Hall
Attn: Project Narrative
164 W 17th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
Please email projectnarrative@osu.edu with any questions about applying.
Fees and Housing:
Tuition for the 2017 Project Narrative Summer Institute is $1600. This does not include housing, but the Project Narrative staff will assist participants in finding affordable housing options according to individual needs. Project Narrative cannot provide financial aid, but the co-directors will gladly write in support of participants’ applications for funding from home institutions.
Structure of PNSI 2017:
The seminar begins with a dinner on Sunday, July 9 and meets on weekdays until the final dinner on Friday, July 21. The co-directors will distribute a list of readings to be completed before the beginning of the institute. Each participant will bring a scholarly or pedagogical project to work on during the two weeks and to share with PNSI seminar members. The project might be, for example, the outline for an article or conference paper, a proposal for a book or dissertation, a lesson plan or a course syllabus. The Institute meets each morning as a seminar to discuss assigned readings and to share work in progress, giving participants time in the afternoons to pursue their individual projects. The co-directors will facilitate seminar discussions and make themselves available to meet once with each participant.
Topics and approaches to be addressed:
Seminar readings will survey theoretical writings from a variety of disciplines on the gendered and sexed dimensions of narrative. Topics for discussion include queer theory, French feminism, and the erotic; temporality, spatiality, and seriality; ethnography, oral narrative, and conversational storytelling; medicine, embodiment, and dis/ability; intersectionality and assemblage; the structure of address in literary and popular- media texts; tellability and the unnarratable. Texts for close analysis will include Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home, women’s religious conversion narratives and queer coming-out stories in written and You-Tube formats, and Netflix TV’s Orange is the New Black, as well as selected short literary examples. To provide a common vocabulary for discussing elements of narrative, participants will read David Herman et al., Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (2012), with particular attention to the sections written by Robyn Warhol on feminist narratology.
For more information about PNSI email either of the co-directors at warhol.1@osu.edu or shuman.1@osu.edu. Watch the Ohio State University Project Narrative website for developing details about the reading assignments and daily schedule for PNSI 2017.