23.5. MITÄ JOS? – MONITIETEINEN SPEKULAATIOTYÖPAJA
Tiistai 23.5. klo 10.15–15.30
Pinni B:n Olkkari (1029–30)
Erilaisten ”mitä jos?” -skenaarioiden rakentaminen, mahdollisten tulevaisuuksien ennakoiminen ja vaihtoehtoisten todellisuuksien kuvittelu – sanalla sanoen spekulaatio – kuuluu paitsi fiktion, myös tieteen ja tiedeviestinnän tiedolliseen ja kerronnalliseen keinovalikoimaan. Tänä päivänä elämme monin tavoin epävarmassa maailmassa, ja vaikka epävarmuus on pelottavaa, se toimii myös hedelmällisenä kasvualustana uudenlaisille, ristiriitaisille ja kilpailevillekin kuvitelmille. Erilaiset vaihtoehdot ovat jatkuvasti ilmassa, ja niihin kätkeytyy sekä uhkia että mahdollisuuksia niin yksilöiden kuin yhteiskuntienkin näkökulmasta.
Mutta mistä oikeastaan puhumme, kun puhumme spekulaatiosta, ja mitä käytännössä teemme, kun spekuloimme? Millaista tiedonintressiä spekulaatio palvelee, ja miten se suhteutuu kuvittelun, ennakoinnin ja hypoteesin kaltaisiin lähikäsitteisiin? Mikä on spekulaation suhde yhtäältä fiktioon, toisaalta yhteiskunnalliseen tulevaisuuden suunnitteluun? Miten kertomus ja keskustelu mahdollistavat spekulaatiota, ja missä kulkevat niiden rajat?
Tutkimuskeskus Narraressa 23.5.2023 klo 10.15–15.30 järjestettävässä monitieteisessä työpajassa spekulaation käsitettä ja käytänteitä lähestytään paitsi teoreettisesta näkökulmasta, myös vuorovaikutteisilla spekulaatioharjoitteilla. Paikkana on Pinni B:n Olkkari (1029–30). Työpajan tavoitteena on tuoda yhteen eri alojen tutkijoita rakentamaan yhdessä syvempää ymmärrystä siitä, mitä spekulaatio voi olla sekä luoda vapaa leikillinen tila spekulaation yhteiseen harjoittamiseen. Päivän lopuksi spekuloimme, mitä muuta annettavaa spekulaatiolla voisi olla kotimaiselle tutkimuskentälle: kiinnostaisiko spekulaatiosymposiumi, poikkitieteellisen yhteisjulkaisun ideointi tai jopa spekulaatiotutkimuksen verkoston perustaminen?
Työpajapäivä alkaa lyhyillä teoreettisilla alustuksilla, jotka johdattelevat pohtimaan, mitä spekulaatio merkitsee eri tieteenaloilla ja miten sitä voisi lähestyä monitieteisen kertomuksentutkimuksen näkökulmasta. Tämän jälkeen otamme konkreettisempaa tuntumaa spekulaatioon kognitiivisena, tiedollisena ja sosiaalisena toimintana tekemällä vaihtoehtoisia tapahtumakulkuja hahmottelevan kuvitteluharjoituksen. Työpajan ohjelman päättää eläytyvä keskusteluharjoitus, jossa ratkotaan yhteiskunnallisia ongelmia arkitodellisuudesta etäännytetyssä skenaariossa. Lopuksi, klo 15.30 eteenpäin, aikaa jää vapaalle keskustelulle ja virvokkeille.
Työpajaan ovat tervetulleita kaikki spekulaatiota tutkivat ja siitä kiinnostuneet tieteenalaan katsomatta. Paja on kuitenkin kokonaan suomenkielinen. Tarjoilujen mitoittamista varten pyydämme ilmoittautumaan mukaan 12.5. mennessä tällä lomakkeella: https://forms.office.com/e/iu32UftgFw.
Työpajan järjestävät spekulaatiota ja sen eri muotoja omissa hankkeissaan tutkivat tohtorit Hanna-Riikka Roine (Tampereen yliopisto), Elise Kraatila (Tampereen yliopisto) ja Essi Varis (Helsingin & Oslon yliopistot). Viime vuonna pajan järjestäjät tuottivat myös spekulaatioon keskittyvän teemaosion Fafnir – Nordic Journal for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research -lehteen: http://journal.finfar.org/fafnir-2-2022.
Lisätietoja: hanna.roine(at)tuni.fi, elise.kraatila(at)tuni.fi ja essi.varis(at)helsinki.fi.
16.5. “Toward Engaged Narratology?” by Anna Ovaska
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues on Tuesday 16.5. at 4:00 pm with ”Toward Engaged Narratology?”.
Presenter: Anna Ovaska.
Room Pinni B3111, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Stories can change the world, but how about narrative theory? Could narrative research be a form of activism?
In recent years, strands of contemporary narrative theory like intersectional, feminist and queer narratology (Warhol & Lanser 2015; Lanser 2018), econarratology (James & Morel 2020) and story-critical narratology (Mäkelä et al. 2021) have moved narrative research toward a politically, socially and environmentally conscious field of study that could be characterized as “engaged narratology”. Creating and disseminating understanding about narrative structures and forms, these theories emphasize that narrative strategies are not universal or neutral, but they carry out political forms and structures of power. Moreover, they offer new combinations of theory and activism, pedagogical interventions, and models for community engagement.
My talk reflects on the possibilities of “engaged narratology”: how it relates to other recent examples of engaged research (e.g., critical medical humanities, engaged phenomenology), what kinds of practices of outreach have been developed so far (e.g., Narrative for Social Justice -podcast) and what might lie ahead (crip narratology, neurodivergent narratology?).
12.5. Guest lecture: Monika Fludernik “The History of Free Indirect Discourse before Jane Austen”
12 May at 10-12
Tampere University, city centre campus, Päätalo -building, Auditorium D10b.
Professor Monika Fludernik, Univesity of Freiburg
Free indirect discourse (FID) has often been claimed to occur from Jane Austen’s work onwards. Although there have been studies showing earlier instances, they have often been ignored. This lecture will present an up-to-date summary of FID occurrences since Middle English until Jane Austen, discussing the various forms and functions of the device and its uses in speech and consciousness representation. It will be shown that speech representations predominate before Austen but that FID was present in the eighteenth century to much larger extent than usually admitted, and that there are quite respectable instances in late medieval and early modern narrative as well.
Monika Fludernik is Professor of English Literature at the University of Frei-burg/Germany. Until 2021 she was also the director of the graduate school Factual and Fictional Narration (GRK 1767). Her major research interests include narratology, linguistic approaches to literature, especially metaphor studies, ‘Law and Literature,’ postcolonial studies and eighteenth-century aesthetics. She is the author of The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction (1993), the award-winning Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (1996), Echoes and Mirrorings: Gabriel Josipovici’s Creative Oeuvre (2000), An Introduction to Narratology (2009) and Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction and Fantasy (2019). Among her several (co-)edited volumes are Hybridity and Postcolonialism (1998), In the Grip of the Law (2004), Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory (2011), Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature (2014), Narrative Factuality: A Handbook (2019) and Being Untruthful: Lying, Fiction, and the Non-Factual (2021). Articles have appeared in, among others, Text, Semiotica, The Journal of Historical Pragmatics, English Literary History, New Literary History, Textual Practice, ARIEL, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Diacritics, Poetics Today, Narrative, Style, The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature and The James Joyce Quarterly.
Join on site or remotely via Zoom Link (Meeting ID: 692 9687 8567 Passcode: 047996)
All interested most welcome!
Note: Professor Fludernik will also act as a guest speaker at Narrare’s Concept Workshop “Voice” which takes place on the same day as the lecture at 13-16. More information and pre-registration: Link.
12.5. Concept Workshop: Voice
‘Voice’ has been a crucial and complex concept in various fields of humanities as well as social and political research. The workshop considers questions like voice as a metaphor and source of subjectivity vs. voice as socially, culturally, and politically layered phenomenon, voice as a metaphor vs. the use of the material voice. In qualitative social research, the “own voice” of the studied ordinary people was celebrated for a long time, and sometimes researchers even promised to “give a voice” to the marginalized or subaltern people. In many languages, such and German and Finnish, voice and vote are still expressed by the same word. In narratology, the voice (originally, by Genette) referred to the instance who was uttering the words and sentences we can read in different parts of fictional works. Feminist, postcolonial, and rhetorical narratologies, among others, have brought new layers and questions to the issue of the voice. How useful and productive is the concept of ‘voice’ for contemporary narrative studies? What different approaches to voice can be identified?
Guest speaker:
Monika Fludernik: Voice and the Medieval Storyteller
Other speakers:
Maria Mäkelä (literature): Voice and consciousness
Hanna Rautajoki (sociology): Aspects of voice in conversational storytelling
Mari Hatavara (literature): Vicarious voices
The workshop is open, but pre-registration on or before 4 May is recommended. Register here (https://forms.office.com/e/iftPaTJUav)
Note: Professor Fludernik will also present an open lecture on the same day at 10-12. More details: Link.
26.4. Book Launch: “Narrative in Urban Planning: A Practical Field Guide”
Lieven Ameel, Jens Martin Gurr, Barbara Buchenau
Book Launch for Narrative in Urban Planning: A Practical Field Guide
April 26, 2023. 15h-16.30h, at RJ108, School of Architecture, Hervanta Campus, Tampere University
Zoom link: https://tuni.zoom.us/j/68406184345?pwd=SjFkRXFTZk9TQm1zUzk2cy9pVmhJUT09
What do planners need to know in order to use narrative approaches responsibly in their practice? This practical field guide makes insights from narrative research accessible to planners through a glossary of key concepts in the field of narrative planning. What makes narratives coherent, probable, persuasive, even necessary – but also potentially harmful, manipulative and divisive? How can narratives help to build more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive communities? The authors are literary scholars who have extensive practical experience in planning practice, training planning scholars and practitioners or advising municipalities on how to harness the power of stories in urban development.
This is the first book to synthesize the theory and practice of storytelling in urban planning into a usable handbook for practitioners. It makes available key insights both from research and from practical experience in training planners and in working with municipalities. The emphasis is on accessibility and applicability: in clearly structured entries, this practical field guide defines key concepts, provides examples and illustrations, and discusses possible applications. The book aims to allow a practitioner in the middle of a project to quickly look up a relevant key concept, but also to provide pointers to in-depth research.
Program:
15.15: opening words
Lieven Ameel (TUNI), Jens Martin Gurr & Barbara Buchenau (University of Duisburg-Essen)
15.25-15.50: commentaries
“Narrative in planning” – commentator: Dalia Milián Bernal, architect and doctoral researcher (TUNI)
“utopia”, “metaphor”, “model” – commentator: Juho Rajaniemi, Vice Dean for Education, professor of urban planning and design (TUNI)
“rhythm”, “palimpsest”, “path-dependency” – commentator: Panu Lehtovuori, professor of planning theory (TUNI)
15.50-16.30: Q&A, refreshments
For catering, please sign in with this form by April 19: https://forms.office.com/e/6Fg8SKMczu
Book details and link:
Lieven Ameel, Jens Martin Gurr & Barbara Buchenau: Narrative in Urban Planning: A Practical Field Guide. Transcript 2023.
Published Open Access, March, 2023.
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/detail/index/sArticle/6337/sCategory/310000027
Event organizers: TUNI School of Architecture / Narrare Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies at Tampere University, Finland / History, Philosophy and Literary Studies Unit
25.4. “The Campfires of Storytelling Consultancy” by Maria Mäkelä
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues on Tuesday 25.4. at 4:00 pm with ”The Campfires of Storytelling Consultancy”.
Presenter: Maria Mäkelä.
Room Pinni B3111, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The 21st century story economy, urging individuals, organizations, and businesses to become storytellers, has given rise to a new business branch, storytelling consultancy. While acknowledging the central role of cultural savviness in working life and creating new earning opportunities for humanists, the revenue logic of storytelling consultancy risks clouding the popular understanding of what narratives are and what they can do. My talk will address the prototypical doctrines of storytelling consultancy and the underlying concept of “compelling story” from a critical, narrative theory-informed perspective. I will discuss examples from the best-selling US storytelling manuals by Jonah Sachs (Winning the Story Wars 2012) and Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy 2018) and training materials by John Yorke (UK; johnyorkestory.com).
Maria Mäkelä, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and former director (2016–2020) of Narrare. Her publications deal with the story economy; the neoliberal logic of narrative and fiction; exemplarity; consciousness, voice, and realism across media; adultery in fiction; authorial ethos; and critical applications of postclassical narratologies.
18.4. “Literary Epiphany from Modernism to Contemporary Short Fiction” by Riikka Pirinen
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues on Tuesday 18.4. at 4:00 pm with ”Literary Epiphany from Modernism to Contemporary Short Fiction”.
Presenter: Riikka Pirinen.
Room Pinni B3111, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
As a sudden and momentary experience of enlightenment, realization, or revelation, literary epiphany has been considered a trope typical to modernist literature, and particularly to modernist short fiction. The presentation asks why this modernist trope has made a significant return in contemporary forms of storytelling, and why epiphany has nested particularly in the short story form. Analyses of contemporary short fiction expose the roles and functions of literary epiphany, and show how it exploits, re-evaluates, and questions the tradition of modernism. Via these questions the presentation places literary epiphany in the discussion about metamodernism that seeks to conceptualize and understand the cultural space and dominant after postmodernism.
Riikka Pirinen is doctoral researcher in Literary Studies at Tampere University. She is working on her PhD thesis concerning the relations between literary epiphany and experience in Anglo-Saxon short story form in 20th and 21st centuries. Her research interests vary from narrative theory and short story form to modernism and its connections to metamodernism. Pirinen is currently writing two research articles concerning the use of free indirect discourse in Alice Munro’s poetics, and metamodernism in contemporary Finnish short fiction.
28.3. “Speculative Pasts and Futures in Non-Fictional Narratives” by Elise Kraatila
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues on Tuesday 28.3. at 4:00 pm with ”Speculative Pasts and Futures in Non-Fictional Narratives.
Presenter: Elise Kraatila.
Room Pinni B3111, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The presentation discusses narrative speculation as an epistemic device in (ostensibly) non-fictional storytelling. It approaches the subject via two case studies: a speculative imagining of the Cretaceous epoch in David Attenborough’s documentary series Prehistoric Planet (2022), and an example of Yle’s “what if” -journalism titled “More than a million Finns might have to flee from east to west if Russia threatened war – an evacuation journey in 2022 would be like this” (September 2022). Analyzing these two recent instances of speculative storytelling in works framed as non-fiction, the presentation explores the relations between speculativeness and fictionality as epistemic and rhetorical modes of storytelling. What kind of knowledge is created, communicated or legitimized via non-fictional speculative narratives, and how does it resemble or differ from speculation as a device of narrative fiction?
7.3. “Implied Fandom and Game of Thrones” Markus Laukkanen
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues on Tuesday 7.3. at 4:00 pm with ”Implied Fandom and Game of Thrones”
Presenter: Markus Laukkanen.
Room Pinni B3111, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The proliferation of the internet, and of participatory networked audiences, has changed the production and reception of most narratives. This presentation explores some of these changes from the point of view of the communicative structures proposed by narrative theory, particularly the model of the implied author. While that model itself remains somewhat contentious, some of the changes in the dynamics of communication of fictional texts in the age of the internet (or convergence culture) can be, if not exhaustively explained, then at least fruitfully approached through the lens of these models. This approach also illuminates the strengths and shortcomings of the model of the implied author itself from a novel perspective. While the presentation approaches the topic through HBO’s popular TV-series Game of Thrones (2011–2019), its paratexts and its audiences, similar structures of communication can be readily pointed out in many contemporary works of fiction.
21.2. HEX & Narrare: Concept workshop “master and counter narratives & cultural scripts”
Tuesday 21 February, 14.15-15.45
Tampere University, Linna building room K103
The workshop concentrates on two concepts which are interesting to both historical and narrative research. The programme starts with short (approx 10 mins) introductions to the concepts from the perspectives of both disciplines. The second half of the workshop is dedicated to free discussion. Prior specific knowledge or readings are not required. Everybody is very welcome to come and listen, share their thoughts and join in finding interdisciplinary ideas together!
- Mari Hatavara (narrative studies): master and counter narratives
- Marja Jalava (history): master and counter narratives
- Matti Hyvärinen (narrative studies): cultural scripts
- Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (history): cultural scripts
Chair: Reetta Eiranen
14.2. “Official Document Utopias” Marko Teräs
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues 14.2. at 4:00 pm with ”Official Document Utopias”
Presenter: Marko Teräs.
Room Pinni B4115, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
This presentation explores how the story of a brave new technological future utopia flows into national visions and practices, and how it materializes in local practices. International organizations such as the OECD and EU with technological corporations such as Microsoft and Google influence the direction of global digitalization and datafication, and national decision making. The core governing rule of this discourse is“digitalization and datafication have potential to…” This discourse flows globally with vision documents and reports, authored by public officials, consultants, and experts of various kinds. These documents appear to describe and predict the future, but in addition, they are legitimizing and constructing it. This presentation explores these developments with international and national policy documents and reports, learning analytics discourse analysis with several Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs), and Digivision 2030, a Finnish national level initiative. It will also ask if there are possibly totalising tendencies in connecting all of these with global data governance. The presentation ends in asking if there are methods, possibilities, and reasons to imagine and narrate alternative futures.
The Narrative Studies Seminar brings together researchers from different fields studying narratives at Tampere University. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Individual sessions consist of an introductory presentation (up to 30 min) and general discussion.
24.1. “Computational recognition of narratives” Mari Hatavara
Join us as Research Centre Narrare’s interdisciplinary Narrative Studies Seminar continues 24.1. at 4:00 pm with ”Computational recognition of narratives”
Presenter: professor of Finnish Literature Mari Hatavara.
Room Pinni B4115, or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
This talk is based on collaborative work in the projects Voices of Democracy (PI Matti Hyvärinen) and Political Temporalities (PI’s Mari Hatavara, Jani Marjanen & Jyrki Nummenmaa). It discusses our efforts to automatically identify narratives from political talk. Computational recognition of narratives could find innumerable applications with large digitized datasets. Systematic identification of narratives in the text flow could significantly contribute to such pivotal questions as where, when, and how narratives are employed. We have developed an approach to extract narratives from two datasets, Finnish parliamentary records (1980–2021) and oral history interviews with former Finnish MPs (1988–2018). Our study is based on an iterative approach, proceeding from the original expert reading to a rule-based, computational approach that has been elaborated with the help of annotated samples and annotation scheme. In this talk, I exhibit and compare the results from annotation and rule-based approach, and discuss examples of correctly and incorrectly found narrative sections. We consider that all attempts at recognizing and extracting narratives are definition dependent, and feed back to narrative theory.
The Narrative Studies Seminar brings together researchers from different fields studying narratives at Tampere University. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Individual sessions consist of an introductory presentation (up to 30 min) and general discussion.