18.-19.6. Symposium: Big & Small Stories
International Symposium, June 18-19, 2025.
Tampere University, Linna -building, room K103 (Kalevantie 5, 33100 Tampere, Finland) or Zoom (Link Meeting ID: 641 6856 2117 Passcode: 458666)
Keynotes: Jan Alber, Alex Georgakopoulou, Elise Kraatila, Jarmila Mildorf
Narrative studies have often focused on lengthy accounts of happenings, be it fictional literature (novels) that the classical narratology is based on, or biographical interviews social sciences often analyze. Small stories paradigm was established to broaden the definition of narrative outside of long, teller-led accounts of past events and to shift the focus more on how stories function in interaction from the content of stories told. Small stories research focuses on ways and sites of telling as well as the tellers in the effort to analyze stories in context and their relation to identities. Its aim is to offer tools and modes of analysis for socio-cultural and situational context of stories, the interplay between dominant and counter-narratives as well as the interchange between personal and collective, culturally established stories. (See Georgakopoulou, Giaxoglou & Patron 2023, “Introduction”.)
On the other hand, those stories that narrative studies have traditionally focused on are led to a conventional understanding of “prototypical narrative” as a form geared towards conveying human or human-like experientiality (e. g. Herman 2009). This focus on human-scale accounts and individual subjectivity limits the field’s capacity to grapple with the grander-scale and collective forms of storytelling that various actors engage in to make narrative sense of happenings related to complex systems and wicked problems like climate change, geopolitical crises, and pandemics. Are these kinds of phenomena truly as “unnarratable” as some theorists suggest (Walsh 2018; Raipola 2019), or do they, like the small stories, merely constitute a challenge to classical narrative theory?
The symposium is organized in the context of the project Age of Uncertainty: Speculative Narratives in 21st-century Fiction and Nonfiction (PI Elise Kraatila, Tampere Institute for Advanced Study) in collaboration with Narrare.
Symposium Programme:
Wednesday June 18 (all times are in EEST)
10.15 – 12.00 Keynote session I (Chair: Mari Hatavara)
Elise Kraatila: Big Stories and Grand-scale Systems Thinking in Fiction and Nonfiction (abstract)
Jan Alber: The Political Ramifications of Big Stories (abstract)
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch break
13.30 – 15.15 Keynote Session II (Chair: Mari Hatavara)
Alexandra Georgakopoulou: Reimagining small stories as formatted narratives in the postdigital era (abstract)
Jarmila Mildorf: Telling Difficult Stories: Small Stories and the Limits of Sense-Making (abstract)
15.15 – 15.45 Break
15.45 – 16.45 Panel discussion: Core questions of big and small stories (Chair: Laura Piippo)
Thursday June 19
10.15 – 11.15 Paper session I (Chair: Laura Piippo)
Mari Hatavara: Narrativity in the Parliamentary Talk. How to Interpretate Small (or Big) Stories in Argumentative Language Use?
Markus Laukkanen & Riikka Pirinen: Small Stories about Big Geopolitics in Finnish journalism about NATO
11.15 – 11.30 Break
11.30 – 12.30 Paper session II (Chair: Laura Piippo)
Aura Lounasmaa: Representation, truth and tellability in small stories of forced migration
Anna Kuutsa: Verbalizing Master and Counter Narratives in Fictional Dialogue
Keynotes:
Jan Alber is Professor and Chair of New English and American Literature at JLU Giessen University (Germany) and Past President of the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN). He is the author of Narrating the Prison (Cambria Press, 2007) and Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama (University of Nebraska Press, 2016). Alber’s articles have been published in journals such as European Journal of English Studies, Journal of Narrative Theory, Literature Compass, Narrative, Poetics Today, Scientific Study of Literature, Storyworlds, and Style. He is the editor (or co-editor) of 13 edited collections, the most recent one being Pandemic Storytelling (with Deborah de Muijnck and Jessica Jumpertz) (Brill, 2025). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies (ed. Jan Alber and Ralf Schneider) will be published later this year. Alber is currently working on a UKRI project (funded by AHRC and the German Research Foundation) on post-postmodernist fictions of the digital (PPFDs) with Alice Bell
Alex Georgakopoulou is Professor of Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics, King’s College London. She has developed small stories research, a paradigm for the analysis of everyday life storytelling and identities, with a current focus on storytelling as curated communication on social media. She has (co)-authored & edited 18 books of which the latest volume is: Influencer discourse: Affective relations & identities (2024; co-ed. with Pilar Blitvich, John Benjamins). She is currently completing a monograph with Anna De Fina entitled Analyzing narrative online (forthcoming, Routledge). She is the Co-Editor of the Routledge Research in Narrative, Interaction & Discourse Series.
Elise Kraatila is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Tampere Institute for Advanced Study. Her current research project, ‘Age of Uncertainty: Speculative Narratives in Fiction and Nonfiction’ (2023–2025) concerns future-oriented speculation and scenario-building; the previous, one, ‘Global-scale Poetics’ (2022–2023) investigated representations of planetary-scale phenomena in contemporary science fiction; and the next one, ‘Journalistic Future Narratives in and about Nato-era Finland’ (2025–2027) will tackle the role of storytelling in media discourse surrounding Finnish foreign policy since Spring 2022. Kraatila’s research interests and publications have long revolved around speculation as an epistemic and rhetorical property of storytelling and the limits of narrative representation. Her first monograph on these (and other) topics, Speculative Mimesis in Fantasy Literature, will be out from Bloomsbury Academic next Autumn.
Jarmila Mildorf is Professor of English Philology at the University of Paderborn. Her research focuses on life storytelling in oral history and autobiography, second-person narration, dialogue, audionarratology, radio drama, literature and medicine and the medical humanities. She is the author of Storying Domestic Violence: Constructions and Stereotypes of Abuse in the Discourse of General Practitioners (University of Nebraska Press, 2007) and Life Storying in Oral History: Fictional Contamination and Literary Complexity (De Gruyter, 2023), and co-editor of numerous collections and journal special issues, most recently, Narrative and Mental Health: Reimagining Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2023), Word, Sound and Music in Radio Drama (Brill, 2024), Performing Selves in the 21st Century (forthcoming in Partial Answers) and Life Storytelling across Media and Contexts (forthcoming in Narrative Inquiry). Mildorf serves on the editorial boards of the book series Narratives and Mental Health, Jahrbuch Literatur und Medizin and the journals EON and Re:visit.
3.6. Seminar “Ukrainian war discourse: An idea-turned-effect analysis”
3 June 2025 (Tuesday), 14.15-15.45 EET
International seminar on “Ukrainian war discourse: An idea-turned-effect analysis” focused on a narratological and linguistic analysis of discourses and narratives around the current Russian-Ukrainian war. Two guest talks will consider the following topics:
- Key features of the Ukrainian war discourse;
- An idea-turned-effect analysis:
- Explains what outcomes an idea coded in the text is supposed to yield;
- Reveals how ‘the war in ukraine’ concept transforms into effects via morphosyntactic constructions, image schemas, metaphors.
- Variants of the Ukrainian war discourse:
- News variant (English-speaking media); effects: balancing, non-intense war beginning, spatial scaling, temporal scaling, temporal zoom-in;
- Creative variant (Ukrainian book covers, songs, video clips); effects: unlawful deadly invasion, destruction, devastation, their interaction.
Join us on Zoom: Link (Meeting ID: 677 5253 3935 Passcode: 677363)
With guest speakers:
Prof. Dr. Natalya Izotova, Head of Department, English Philology and Philosophy of Language, Kyiv Linguistic University. Specializes in concept studies, stylistics, cognitive narratology.
Prof. Dr. Serhiy Potapenko, English Philology and Philosophy of Language, Kyiv Linguistic University. Specializes in cognitive linguistics, cognitive rhetoric and media linguistics.
The seminar is co-organised in collaboration with Natalya Bekhta and the research project “Utopia and Eastern European Literature after 1989” (Research Council of Finland; project ID 361957).
21.5. Book launch: Narrative Research: Research Methods (Bloomsbury)
Narrare Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies and Association for Narrative Research and Practice (ANRP) invite you to Book launch for Narrative Research: Research Methods (Bloomsbury 2025)
With co-athors Mark Davis, Lars-Christer Hydén, Corinne Squire, Aura Lounasmaa and Molly Andrews and commentator Matti Hyvärinen.
Time: Wednesday May 21, 2025 at 3.30pm Helsinki time (2.30pm CET, 1.30pm UK)
Venue: Tampere University main campus Pinni B4113 or zoom (https://tuni.zoom.us/j/61283549571?pwd=RyHWMPoxsyNjgbpPYbx0qWJOXyKqbU.1)
After the event we invite those present in Tampere to celebrate the publication with light refreshments in Pinni B3071
This is a book launch for Narrative Research. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/narrative-research-9781350319035/, which is the second edition of the book originally entitled What is Narrative Research.
Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book brings together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, it examines how narrative research is conducted and applied. It operates as a practical introductory guide, basic enough for first-time researchers, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. The authors guide readers through current debates about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts.
Copies available for purchase at the venue for €15 (cash or mobilepay)
1.4. Noora Vaakanainen “Appropriating Voices: Narratorial Overtness in Laura Lindstedt’s Oneiron”
This talk is a part of the Narrative Studies Seminar
Time: Tuesday 1 April 3:15 pm (EET); Place: Pinni B4113 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Appropriating Voices: Narratorial Overtness in Laura Lindstedt’s Oneiron
The Narrative Studies Seminar is open to all interested persons. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
11.3. Jukka Jouhki “Länsimaat Ukrainan sodan uutisissa: oksidentalistisen kerronnan tarkastelua”
Tutkimuskeskus Narraren monitieteellinen kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari jatkuu tiistaina 11.3. klo. 15:15.
Tila: Pinni B4113 tai Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Länsimaat Ukrainan sodan uutisissa: oksidentalistisen kerronnan tarkastelua
Miten ja milloin lännestä tai länsimaista kirjoitetaan? Esitelmässäni käsittelen sitä, millainen kertomuksellinen ilmiö ”länsi” ja länsimaat ovat ja kuinka länsimaista kerrotaan suomalaisessa uutismediassa erityisesti Ukrainan sodan uutisoinnin yhteydessä. Esittelen myös ”oksidentalismia” (occident = länsi) tai länsi-puhetta ja sen kolmea kerronnallista funktiota, jotka olen nimennyt poissulkevaksi, yleistäväksi ja kuvailevaksi oksidentalismiksi. Kertomuksentutkijoiden kritiikki ja ehdotukset aiheeni ja havaintojeni suhteen ovat lämpimästi tervetulleita!
Kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari on kaikille avoin, ja sen tavoitteena on herätellä moni- ja poikkitieteistä keskustelua aineistoista, menetelmistä, teorioista ja tutkimuksen tilasta. Seminaarissa keskustellaan meneillään ja aluillaan olevista kertomukseen liittyvistä tutkimuksista. Jokainen kerta sisältää alustuksen (noin 20 min) sekä keskusteluosuuden. Esitelmöijät ovat eri uravaiheissa olevia Tampereen yliopiston tutkijoita.
18.2. Nanny Jolma: “Muistelu, fiktionaalisuus ja kerronnallinen asemointi kansanedustajien muistitietohaastatteluissa”
Tutkimuskeskus Narraren monitieteellinen kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari jatkuu tiistaina 18.2. klo. 15:15.
Tila: Pinni B4113 tai Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Muistelu, fiktionaalisuus ja kerronnallinen asemointi kansanedustajien muistitietohaastatteluissa
Muistaa-verbi on muistitietohaastatteluissa toistuvasti esiintyvä kielen keino. Se toistuu haastattelijan ja haastateltavan vuorovaikutuksessa ja kytkeytyy niin menneen jäsentämiseen, reflektointiin, kuin uuden kertomuksen aloittamiseenkin. Tästä huolimatta muistaa-verbin merkitysten systemaattinen tarkastelu on jäänyt tutkimuksessa huomiotta.
Esitelmä tarkastelee muistaa-verbin käyttöä osana muistelukerronnan keinovarantoa entisten kansanedustajien muistitietohaastatteluissa. Keskiössä on erityisesti muistamisen tai muistamattomuuden sanallistaminen kerronnallisen asemoinnin keinona sekä fiktionaalisuutta hyödyntävissä kerronnallisissa jaksoissa. Analyysin lähtökohtana on kerronnan ja tarinan tasojen erottaminen vuorovaikutuksellisesti rakentuvissa haastattelukertomuksissa. Esitelmässä havainnollistetaan, että toistuvuudessaan arkiselta vaikuttavan muistaa-verbin funktiot eivät muistitietohaastattelussa rajoitu menneisyyden uudelleen tulkinnan ja osallisuuden ilmaisemiseen. Sen sijaan muistaa-verbin avulla kerronnalliseen vuorovaikutukseen tuotetaan runsaasti erilaisia, toistensa kanssa limittäisiä ja ristiriitaisiakin merkityksiä. Esitelmä pohjautuu hiljattain julkaistuun artikkeliin (Jolma & Teräs 12/2024).
Kertomuksentutkimuksen seminaari on kaikille avoin, ja sen tavoitteena on herätellä moni- ja poikkitieteistä keskustelua aineistoista, menetelmistä, teorioista ja tutkimuksen tilasta. Seminaarissa keskustellaan meneillään ja aluillaan olevista kertomukseen liittyvistä tutkimuksista. Jokainen kerta sisältää alustuksen (noin 20 min) sekä keskusteluosuuden. Esitelmöijät ovat eri uravaiheissa olevia Tampereen yliopiston tutkijoita.
1.2. Maria Mäkelä: “Authors of The Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st-Century Literary Field”
This seminar session has been postponed due to sickness. The new date for Maria Mäkeläs presentation is Feb. 11 at 3:15 pm EET.
This talk is a part of the Narrative Studies Seminar
Time: Tuesday 28 January 11 February 3:15 pm (EET); Place: Pinni B4113 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
Authors of The Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st-Century Literary Field
The 21st century story economy, prompting everyone to tell their story, puts a new strain on literary authors. They need to cope in the literary field transformed by digitalisation, in an environment where storytelling is considered a strategy and a business model. Personal stories of transformation and survival constitute narrative capital. Narrative capital is further entangled with digital capital, the ability to make use of, for example, the affordances of social media.
The talk outlines theoretical and methodological foundations for literary research that would combine the study of (1) the loss of autonomy of the 21st-century literary field (cf. Bourdieu 1992) and (2) the narrative ethos of contemporary authors as storytellers who need to naviagate rhetorically and ethically between different storytelling platforms, from social media and personal interviews to literary fiction. The suggested approach draws from both the sociology of literature and the rhetorical theory of narrative. The talk also serves as an introduction to the newly launched research project Authors of the Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st-Century Literary Field (AUTOSTORY, Research Council of Finland 2024–2028, consortium PI Mäkelä).
The Narrative Studies Seminar is open to all interested persons. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
3.2. Guest lecture: “Entering Through the Right Ear: Narrative and the Mind” by Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar
Monday 3 February at 14-16
Tampere University, City centre campus, Linna -building, Room K103 and Zoom (Link)
Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar, University of Groningen
Entering Through the Right Ear: Narrative and the Mind
What do we talk about when we talk about narrative? What do we talk about when we talk about (the) mind? In this lecture, I will propose working definitions of both terms, and attempt to open up the worlds of knowledge within which academic and folk debates around the nexus of narrative and the mind are embedded. My hypothesis will be that while our minds are predisposed to storify experience, the mind itself is also fundamentally storified. Therefore, we need, alongside our narrative competency – i.e. the ability to storify our life experiences – a narrative literacy: the capacity to critically reflect on how our mind creates stories, and stories create our mind. I will finish my lecture with discussing the relevance of my findings for applied narratology: how can they inform the bringing together of theories of narrative and storytelling practices?
Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar is co-founder and one of the academic directors of the Netherlands Winter School on Narrative. He has worked with narrative in a variety of capacities, both as an academic at universities in Tunisia and the Netherlands, and as a freelance organizational consultant. Currently he is a senior lecturer for the Arts, Cognition and Criticism programme at the University of Groningen. He is actively involved in and publishes about the establishment of applied narratology: a bridge between theory and practices of narrative. Recent work includes Narrative Values, the Value of Narratives (De Gruyter 2024, co-edited with Barend van Heusden), a special issue on applied narratology in the journal Narrative Inquiry (2024, co-edited with Laura Karttunen and Anna Ovaska), and an upcoming special issue on the same topic in Narrative (2026, co-edited with Genevieve Liveley and Andrea Macrae).
3.2. Applied Narratology and Political Counter-Narratives
Monday February 3, 12.15-13.45, Pinni B4113 and on Zoom (link).
Welcome to a seminar celebrating the recent publication of two special issues in the field of narrative studies!
Program
Chair: Anna Ovaska (Tampere University)
12.15 Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar (University of Groningen)
Applied Narratology: Feedback Loop Between Theory and Practice
12.30 Laura Karttunen (Tampere University)
What is Applied Narratology? Examples from the Field of Medical Humanities (Introducing the special issue “Applied Narratology”)
12.45 Discussion
12.55 Hanna Rautajoki (Tampere University)
Master/counter positioning as an argumentative resource in political persuasion
13.10 Samuli Björninen (University of Turku)
Considering Political Counter-Narratives: Introducing the Special Issue
13.25 Discussion
Special issue “Applied Narratology”. Ed. Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar, Laura Karttunen & Anna Ovaska. Narrative Inquiry 24:2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.34.2
Special Issue “Considering Political Counter-Narratives.” Ed. Matti Hyvärinen & Samuli Björninen. Narrative Works 13:1, 2024. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NW/issue/view/2362
The seminar is organized by Narrare and the research projects Words for Care: Literature, Healthcare and Democracy; Political Temporalities; Authors of the Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st-Century Literary Field; Arts, Narrative and Cognition theme group (Groningen).
29.1. Cross-disciplinary approaches to restorative Narratives
Time: Wednesday 29 January 3.00-4.30pm EET (2.00-3.30pm CET)
Location: Tampere University, Pinni B4113 and Zoom https://tuni.zoom.us/j/65559957984?pwd=bdTGUeian7MEG8WzlhdpsGlstLbJv7.1
Do narratives have restorative power? If so, what kind of narratives have this power, and how do we identify them? In this seminar we discuss possible analytical approaches to identifying and understanding restorative narratives in different disciplinary and methodological traditions and discuss the possibilities and limits of interdisciplinary methodologies in understanding restorative narratives.
Programme
3.00-4.10 (EET) presentations:
- Silvia Pierosara, University of Macerata: Restorative Narratives, introduction
- Veronica Guardabassi: Collaborative Writing and Inclusion
- Mari Hatavara: The possibilities for distant reading of political narratives in big data
- Jari Stenvall and Sanni Pöntinen: Economic and Social Value, Learning and Narratives in Policy-making: the case of cultural policy in the Covid-19 period in Finland
- Saija Isomaa: Romance as a path to normalcy in young adult dystopias
- Aura Lounasmaa: collective story-telling with refugees as restorative practice
- Lieven Ameel: Redemptive Plots for Post-Industrial Cities
- Laura Piippo and Hanna-Riikka Roine: Antivirality and Digital Restorative Narratives
- Sanna Turoma: Restorative nostalgia in Russian exilic narratives
4.10-4.30 (EET) discussion