Storytelling Research Articles

Critical Listening and the Sounds of Stories in the English Classroom

ABSTRACT As the growing body of English scholarship has made clear, the act of critical listening plays an important role in cultivating a mindful and democratic classroom. By way of Carmen Maria Machado’s short story, ‘The Husband Stitch’ (2017), this article addresses how the tertiary English classroom creates opportunities to re-centre the relationship between critical listening and storytelling to create productive discussion and expression about sociopolitical issues. The sounds that the narrator in the story both speaks and induces shape a narrative to interrogate how we critically listen to each other across gendered and cultural codes. Further cultivating a dialogue around the act of critical listening, students take inspiration from Machado’s story to create sound stories, or stories narrated using sounds and music that respond to gendered injustices. Critical listening, as a practice and a stance, is fundamental to their participation and, the practical objectives of the assignment emphasise teaching about critical listening as an integral aspect of the ways in which the telling and hearing of stories help to underline the inequities of society.

Reading as an Act of Remaking in the Seasonal Quartet

Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is a project about the present, and about how we understand and represent events while they are unfolding. It represents Smith’s interest, as she has described it, in “returning” the novel “to the notion of the new,” telling stories about ongoing current events and emerging social forms (Armitstead 2019). It is also interested in the art of being present, and in the kinds of presence that art asks of its audience. In Artful, her work of creative criticism, Smith writes that art is “a broken thing if it’s anything, and… the art of remaking, or imagining, or imaginative involvement, is what makes the difference” (2014: 25). Smith’s citation practice plays a crucial role in her project’s attempt to understand and represent the present. Citations abound in the Seasonal Quartet: they play a central role in each individual text, connect characters across the series, and offer concrete ties to the world outside each book’s covers. Despite the important role that external pieces of art and media play in her novels, Smith’s references to them are often opaque, and identifying them relies on a combination of cultural knowledge, search engine savvy, and chance. In this essay, I argue that this opacity — especially when read alongside scenes where characters fail to recognize the art they encounter or repurpose it in creative ways — invites readers to search for the art Smith references and experience it themselves. Citation represents not only a material practice for Smith, but also, I argue, a recursive form that structures the passage of time. In attempting to narrate the present as it is happening, using an ‘old’ medium associated with temporal lag rather than immediacy, Smith’s project explores the role of the book in the present, inviting readers to consider how the book might be uniquely positioned to help us understand, represent, and navigate contemporary life.

(Jewish) Rock Stars in a Jewish Museum: Testing the Grounds for a More Inclusive Exhibition at Beit Hatfusot, Tel Aviv

AbstractThis article discusses three exhibitions that took place between 2016 and the present at Beit Hatfusot – The Museum of the Jewish Diaspora (renamed Anu – Museum of the Jewish People in 2021) in Tel Aviv, Israel, and that portrayed three internationally acclaimed (Jewish) rock stars: Amy Winehouse, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. What motivated the museum to curate these exhibitions that clearly deviate from the museum’s traditional narrative of Jewish history, diasporic communities and the establishment of the State of Israel? The article will claim that this can be answered in light of the museum’s recent renovation and new conceptual approach to the portrayal of Jewish culture and identity. The story told in the original exhibition was that Jewish diaspora emerged as a result of destruction and was redeemed with the re-gathering of the dispersed communities in Israel and the formation of the Jewish State; however, the new permanent exhibition, seeks to represent a more contemporary portrayal of Jewish identity. By showcasing internationally renowned and popular Jewish rock stars, the museum moves away from its former traditional, old-fashioned and stagnated mould to suggest a more inclusive and diverse portrayal of Judaism.

What Matters for Educated and Uneducated Indian Women: Realizing Identity Struggle for Self and Matriarchal Harmony through Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence

This article is an attempt to explore the challenges faced by educated and uneducated Indian women and the kind of silence and secrecy they maintain in the patriarchal society in search of self-identity. At the outset, it is worth emphasizing that men have traditionally been claiming a superior status in Indian Society and women have not been able to find equal face in affairs pertaining to family and society. This paper engages with the ways in which women characters are illustrated and how they are compelled by both the genders to remain voiceless in accepting their lot. The major focus of this article is to throw light on Shashi Deshpande’s views about Indian woman brought up under a traditional set up. The novelist’s diligence in story telling is very much evident in the manner in which the protagonist, Jaya, is portrayed in novel That Long Silence. It is pertinent to note that by virtue of her resilience and abilities, Jaya is able to establish an identity overcoming the challenges imposed on her by the family and society.

On the Distillation of Stories for Transferring Narrative Arcs in Collections of Independent Media.

The act of telling stories is a fundamental part of what it means to be human. This work introduces the concept of narrative information, which we define as the overlap in information space between a story and the items that compose the story. Using contrastive learning methods, we show how modern artificial neural networks can be leveraged to distill stories and extract a representation of the narrative information. We then demonstrate how evolutionary algorithms can leverage this to extract a set of narrative template curves and how these-in tandem with a novel curve-fitting algorithm we introduce-can reorder music albums to automatically induce stories in them. In doing so, we give statistically significant evidence that (1)these narrative information template curves are present in existing albums and that (2)people prefer an album ordered through one of these learned template curves over a random one. The premises of our work extend to any form of (largely) independent media, and as evidence, we also show that our method works with image data.

Bibliotherapy: Tracing Its Global Evolution and Exploring the Contemporary Research Landscape in Sri Lanka

Bibliotherapy, the use of literature for therapeutic purposes, has gained increasing attention globally as a complementary approach to mental well-being. Bibliotherapy is a form of creative arts therapy that involves telling stories or reading specific texts and implementing personal connections to the content of books as a therapy. Mainly, there are two types of bibliotherapy as clinical bibliotherapy and developmental bibliotherapy. Clinical bibliotherapy is employed by mental health professionals to address emotional-behavioral problems and achieve therapeutic goals. Developmental bibliotherapy, used by educators, librarians and healthcare assistants and it facilitates to address milder psychological issues. The idea of bibliotherapy is not a new one and it has undergone a dynamic evolution. At early stages, bibliotherapy is developed as ‘reading therapy’. There are various anecdotes scattered through-out the ages that concerning the value of reading. It has been around for centuries, and have been referred to by different terms, depending on the time period. The objectives of this paper were to examine the global evolution of bibliotherapy from its historical roots to the present and to explore the contemporary research landscape of bibliotherapy in Sri Lanka. The methodology based on this study was literary survey. Accordingly, the paper attempts identify the contemporary research landscape in Sri Lanka while revealing global evolution of bibliotherapy. Challenges and possibilities affecting bibliotherapy researches in Sri Lanka are also discussed.

Understanding discourse in face-to-face settings: The impact of multimodal cues and listening conditions.

In face-to-face contexts, discourse is accompanied by various cues, like gestures and mouth movements. Here, we asked whether the presence of gestures and mouth movements benefits discourse comprehension under clear and challenging listening conditions and, if so, whether this multimodal benefit depends on the communicative environment in which interlocutors are situated. In two online experiments, participants watched videoclips of a speaker telling stories, and they answered yes-no questions about the content of each story. The speaker in the videos was spontaneously gesturing (or kept her hands still) and was wearing a surgical mask (or had her lips visible). The experiments differed in the communicative environment. In Experiment 1, the speaker narrated stories in silence, whereas the listener (participants) heard them in clear or degraded speech conditions (analogous to watching the news on TV in a quiet or noisy café). In Experiment 2, the speaker narrated the stories once in silence and once while listening to background noise, and the listener heard them in clear or degraded speech condition, respectively (analogous to listening to a friend in a quiet or noisy café). Across the experiments, we found that cospeech gestures facilitated discourse comprehension regardless of the listening conditions or the presence of a mask. In contrast, mouth movements were primarily helpful in challenging listening conditions. These findings indicate that both cues matter to listeners but to a different extent. Moreover, we found that the multimodal benefit to comprehension was similar regardless of the communicative environment. Thus, this study demonstrates the importance of both cospeech gestures and mouth movements to discourse comprehension, offering insights into the dynamic interplay between these cues under different communicative environments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The disappearance of ‘poverty’ in Dutch House of Representatives debates on the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT)

Policymaking is storytelling; through stories, the policymaker learns of the problem, and based on these stories, the policymaker formulates a solution. In our earlier study of discussions about sexual exploitation of children in the context of travel and tourism (SECTT) in the Dutch House of Representatives, we suggest that the central story in these discussions revolves around ‘crime’ and law enforcement. Despite evidence on the links between poverty and SECTT, few policy suggestions target this risk factor. In our current study, we piece together the story told about the role of poverty in SECTT in Dutch House of Representatives debates, letters and documents from 1995 to 2020 using Faircloughian CDA enhanced with an analysis of transitivity. Our findings indicate that initially, poverty was indeed discussed as a key cause of SECTT. SECTT was understood as a fundamentally commercial practice through which children and their families aim to escape that poverty. Over time, however, the agency attributed to these families diminishes and focus shifts to (the actions of) abusers and exploiters. This development appears to be connected to shifting political orientations of consecutive Dutch government coalitions.

From ‘white man’s science’ to a ‘Brave Space’: an art of decolonising landscape from Environmental Science

In 2021, prompted by the claim of a colleague that the climate and species crises are ‘white man’s science’, two small, seed-funding research projects, explored contemporary cultural values and colonial barriers to people of colour engaging in Environmental Sciences. The project partners included organisations from diverse ethnicities, sectors, cultures and generations in specific locations across the UK. A form of deep listening (consciously focusing on people’s cultural narratives) was explored with creative storying (the making and telling of stories), as an approach to research. And from this a Brave Space emerged between the project participants; gaining the courage to face the challenges of deeply difficult and sensitive topics, such as race, power, privilege and oppression. Climate, species and cultural crises were perceived as the nexus of one crisis or emergency.

Change in emotion-based narrative as a potential mechanism of change in a brief treatment for borderline personality disorder

Background: The move from inconsistent and problematic autobiographical narrative to a more coherent and reality-based narrative construction of the Self has been discussed as potential mechanism of change in psychotherapies for personality disorders. So far, little empirical evidence exists that demonstrates in a time-dependent design the role of narrative construction in the treatment of borderline personality disorder, in particular when it comes to understanding the integration of body-related information from the affective system with the autobiographical narrative. The present study aims at demonstrating change in emotion-based narrative markers over brief psychiatric treatment and to assess the impact of these changes on subsequent symptom change. Methods: A total of N = 57 clients with borderline personality disorder were assessed at three timepoint over the course of four months of brief psychiatric treatment, within the context of a secondary process-outcome analysis of a randomized controlled trial. Symptom change was assessed using the OQ-45.2 and emotion-narrative change was assessed using the Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System to code client’s in-session speech in terms of problem, transition and change markers. Results: All three emotion-based marker categories evidenced significant changes in the assumed direction. The reduction in problem emotion-based narrative markers (e.g., empty story telling) between session 1 and 5 into the treatment predicted the symptom reduction assessed between session 5 and 10. Conclusions: Emotion-based narrative construction may be a suitable method to study the pathway of change toward a more coherent and reality-based narrative construction of the Self-in-interaction-with-the-Other. Reduction of emotion-based problem-marker may be a promising candidate for a mechanism of change in treatments for personality disorders which should be tested in a time-dependent controlled design.

‘That Kind of Role Models it!’ Dynamics of Intergenerational Reinforcement and Disruption of Stigma Towards People Who Use Drugs

Background Stigma towards people who use drugs (PWUD) is a dangerous phenomenon with far-reaching effects. Research shows that parents play a powerful role in the shaping of their children's views of people with mental illness, but no similar research exists to investigate the shaping of views towards PWUD. This qualitative study explores dynamics of intergenerational reinforcement and disruption of stigma towards PWUD. Methods Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with eight people split equally into two categories: 1) Participant-children: people between 18 and 30 and 2) Participant-parents: people of any age with experience as a parent of a child. Participants had some experience of using drugs or alcohol, but this was not a criterion for selection. Interviews elucidated the influence of parents’ views, opinions, narratives, discussions, and disclosures on views towards PWUD. Interviews included questions about stigma and its intergenerational development. Grounded theory was used to analyze the data. Results Three major themes in theory development were elicited for their role in the reinforcement and disruption of stigma towards PWUD: 1) conflation of drug use with other stigmatized characteristics; 2) the telling of stories around problematic drug use; and 3) the use of secrecy or disclosure of personal drug use. Conclusion The results of the study provide an understanding of the dynamics of stigma reinforcement and disruption. Each of the actions described in the themes can work towards either reinforcing or disrupting stigma.

설화의 국가무형유산 종목 지정을 위한 제언

As Korea joined the “UNESCO Convention” in 2005, Korea implemented the “Intangible Cultural Property Act” in 2016. As a result, a field of “Ra(라). Oral Tradition and Expression”, was newly established, making it possible to designate a national cultural heritage item for folktales. Nevertheless, until August 2024, not a single event has been realized in the designation of national intangible heritage of folktales. This is due to the view that since the 1980s, the traditional Iyagipan(이야 기판) has disappeared, and the transmission of oral stories has also been cut off. However, this recognition is a misunderstanding caused by denying that the current transmission of folktales continues actively through the “Beautiful Story Grandma” project and numerous old story telling channels on YouTube etc. Another position against the designation of folktales as national intangible heritage is the opinion that Gureongdeongdeongsinseonbi(구 렁덩덩신선비), Kongji Patzzi(콩쥐팥쥐) are folktales with global universality and lack uniqueness, and can lead to conflict with other countries. However, the value of folktales can be found in various realization patterns such as national identity and cultural uniqueness. Therefore, the designation of a national intangible heritage item of folktales is an important task to protect our identity and uniqueness. Finally, I would like to suggest some opinions to revitalize the designation of folktales as national intangible heritage items. It is urgent to clarify the value of intangible heritage of the current transmission of folktales and to redefine the definition, category, and classification system of the “Ra(라)” field. In addition, systematic policy establishment and long-term research projects should be promoted, and the discovery of local intangible heritage should be actively supported. Aside from that, the construction of a digital archive of folktales should protect and promote the current transmission of folktales.

Narratives of pride: Afghan migrant laborers in Iran

This article recounts the stories of Afghan migrants who have returned from Iran to Afghanistan. I frame these accounts of ordinary Afghans’ life experiences as “narratives of pride,” juxtaposing these stories with narratives of victimhood that dominate the immigration discourse on Afghanistan and more generally. In these narratives, migrants are predominantly characterized as victims in need of being saved. This article instead asks: why do returnees from Iran focus mostly on the positive parts of their mobility while downplaying the difficulties of dealing with the Iranian state, which does not have a good track record of dealing with migrants? In telling stories of years of living and working in Iran or other countries, I find that my interlocutors characterize themselves as sophisticated men of the world with a deep understanding of social and political phenomena that give them the ability to navigate life in foreign lands—an image far from victimhood as it is commonly portrayed in the literature and media. The article argues that in order to better understand the agency of migrants, it is crucial to form long-term connections with them to gain a more nuanced understanding of their experiences, rather than simply reproducing stories of victimhood.

Tuning Two-Photon Absorption in Rhodopsin Chromophore via Backbone Modification: The Story Told by CC2 and TD-DFT.

We investigate here a systematic way to tune two-photon transition strengths (δ2PA) and two-photon absorption (2PA) cross sections (σ2PA) of the rhodopsin's chromophore 11-cis-retinal protonated Schiff base (RPSB) via the modulation of the methyl groups pattern along its polyene chain. Our team employed the resolution of identity, coupled cluster approximate second order (RI-CC2) method with Dunning's aug-cc-pVDZ basis set, to determine the structural impact on δ2PA, as well as its correlation to both transition dipole moments and permanent electric dipole moments. Seven structures were probed in vacuo, including five-double-bond-conjugated model of the native chromophore, shortened by the β-ionone ring (RPSB5), and its de/methylated analogues: 9-methyl, 13-methyl, planar and twisted models of 9,10-dimethyl and 9,10,13-trimethyl. Our results demonstrate that the magnitude of δ2PA is dictated by both the position and number of methylated groups attached to its polyene chain as well as the degree of dihedral twist that is introduced due to the de/methylation. In fact, a strong correlation between δ2PA enhancement and the presence of a C13-methyl group in the planar RPSB5 species is found. Trends in δ2PA values follow the trends observed in their corresponding changes in the permanent dipole moment upon the S0-S1 excitation nearly exactly. The assessment of four DFT functionals, i.e., M11, MN15, CAM-B3LYP, and BHandHLYP, previously found most successful in predicting 2PA properties in biological chromophores, points to a long-range-corrected hybrid meta-GGA M11 as the top-performing functional, albeit still delivering underestimated δ2PA and σ2PA values by a factor of 3.3-5.3 with respect to the CC2 results. In the case of global-hybrid meta-NGA (MN15), as well as CAM-B3LYP and BHandHLYP functionals, this factor deteriorates significantly to 6.7-20.9 and is mostly related to significantly lower quality of the ground- and excited-state dipole moments.

Heritage of Albanian children literature - Creator and Researcher Astrit Bishqemi

Abstract This study aims to analyze the monographies of “Astrit Bishqemi” an Albanian creator and researcher of children and young literature, which highlights the figure and rich literature activity of the writer, novelist, narrator, story teller, translator of Italian, French, of this multidimensional researcher. Facing this humongous literature and scientific work, this monography required a serious work, persistent and challenging, in order to present all the data for the author and his creativity. That is why the realization of this study comes in its own originality, regarding the methodology, scientific writings, interviews or declarations during conversations; the research method to collect works, articles, reviews and many more writings held in conferences and scientific symposiums from Albanian researchers in the area of children literature. Thus, this study presents not only a wide variety of the work of Bishqemi, but also a detailed narration of the children literature during the time.

A Study on the Role of Story(telling) in A Monster Calls

A Study on the Role of Story(telling) in A Monster Calls

Pages that leave a mark: the role of storytelling in the development of language, cognition, and memory in children

Children's literature plays various roles in the development of children, serving as an important pedagogical, didactic, and therapeutic tool. Fables and tales represent a global heritage, spanning generations, eras, and locations, responsible for educating, entertaining, and raising awareness in diverse populations. In this integrative review, it aims to gather studies on the importance and effects of storytelling, linking this act to its role in the child population and seeking to understand if there are already known effects in the literature that correlate it with the development of memory in these individuals. To this end, the present study was conducted through the search for published works available in the PubMed, Scielo, and Google Scholar databases, using the PICo qualitative strategy for integrative reviews. In this way, it is observed that this act has repercussions in various aspects of child development. From shaping values to aiding in the school environment, reducing anxiety, developing linguistic and auditory skills, as well as improving working memory in these individuals. Therefore, storytelling is not just a recreational activity but an essential practice that profoundly influences the emotional, cognitive, and linguistic well-being of children, directly related to their memory development. This review has contributed to the understanding that the telling and retelling of stories can be used as an intervention tool.

Inhibitory Control Training Improves Cold but Not Warm Cognition in Typically Developing Preschoolers.

Inhibitory control, as a fundamental executive function, has been found to be associated with a range of cognitive processes. In this study, our objective was to enhance inhibitory control through a targeted training program and assess its impact on attention, executive function, delay discounting and risky decision making. Thirty-two typically-developing children (age mean 6.89 ± 0.32years) were recruited in a random clinical trial design in two equal intervention and active control groups. Go/No-Go, Flanker, continuous performance, delay discounting, and balloon analogue risk tasks were used for assessment in three baseline, post- intervention, and 3-months follow-up sessions. The intervention group received the program for attentive rehabilitation of inhibition and selective attention (PARISA) and the active control group participated in a story telling class, both in 12 sessions. The results of the study indicate significant improvements in sustained attention, interference control, and prepotent inhibition among participants in the intervention group. However, there were no significant changes observed in delay discounting and risky decision making. These findings suggest that the inhibitory control training primarily enhances aspects of cold cognition and attentional processes. However, the observed improvements did not extend to reward processing or warm cognition.

IT IS THE QUALITY OF OUR CHARACTER THAT DETERMINES OUR PERFORMANCE AND RESULTS

AbstractThe author, Leader to Leader’s editor‐in‐chief, examines the rapid changes in today’s society, and how leaders react to and lead through these changes. She nods to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BC), and begins with a quotation from former Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally. She also quotes from Leader to Leader’s founder, Frances Hesselbein, in her 2005 column “The Leaders We Need”: “In the end, it is the quality and character of the leader that determines the performance, the results.” An important distinction in how leaders adapt and lead through change is to not compromise our values and ethics for the sake of expediency. Recalling one particular example drawn from a story told by a client about someone they had coached, McArthur writes, “Yet, in the end, the leader chose to bend just a touch to meet goals and stay employed rather than to live the values agreed upon by the leadership team and committed to by the entire company.”

Children at the centre: Exploring StoryWeb relationships across home and ECE

Stories are a way that children under 3 years of age learn to share meaning with others. Most research with this age group has focused on 1:1 parent–child story relationships at home, largely book reading. These studies have positioned children in the role of story listeners rather than story tellers. Here, I explore new possibilities about the nature of story roles and relationships spanning home and early childhood education settings. I present a storyweb model to make visible the multiple ways that 1-year-old toddlers were actively engaged in weaving stories with others in a culturally and linguistically diverse community.