Upcoming Events and News

January 2025

29.1. Multidisciplinary approaches to restorative Narratives

Wednesday 29 January 2.00-3.30pm CET/3.00-4.30pm Finnish time Tampere University and zoom https://tuni.zoom.us/s/65559957984

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

2.00-3.10 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

3.10-3-30 discussion

February 2025

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).

3.2. Guest lecture: "Entering Through the Right Ear: Narrative and the Mind" by Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar

Tampere University, City centre campus, Linna -building, Room K103
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).

11.2. Maria Mäkelä “Authors of the Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st-Century Literary Field”

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).

 

Time: Tuesday 11 February 3:15 pm (EET); Place: Pinni B4113 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)

18.2. Nanny Jolma “Muistelu, fiktionaalisuus ja kerronnallinen asemointi kansanedustajien muistitietohaastatteluissa”

This talk is part of the narrative studies seminar.

March 2025

11.3. Jukka Jouhki ”Länsimaat Ukrainan sodan uutisissa: oksidentalistisen kerronnan tarkastelua”

This talk is part of the narrative studies seminar.

25.3. Sanna Turoma “Geopolitics and Culture: Narrating Eastern European and Eurasian Worlds”

This talk is part of the narrative studies seminar.

April 2025

1.4. Noora Vaakanainen “Appropriating Voices: Authorial Narration in Laura Lindstedt’s Oneiron”

This talk is part of the narrative studies seminar.

May 2025

6.5. Elise Kraatila: ”Journalistiset tulevaisuuskertomukset NATO-ajan Suomessa ja Suomesta”

This talk is part of the narrative studies seminar.