Shelbie Harris

News Editor

Though it may have occurred earlier, the first official record is from over 35,000 years ago with large wild beasts and intricate hand tracings covering ancient cave walls. It then progressed through times of trident and lightning bolt wielding super-figures, and followed a man named Odysseus on his 10-year journey home. It also once followed a man named Jesus on his journey.

It’s been integral to the human race from the ancient past, to the present day and will without a doubt accompany every single moment of the future for as long as humanity lives on. What might it be?

“It” is the art of narrative, the dramatic act of storytelling and about 20 ISU faculty members within the College of Arts and Letters are preparing a book titled, “Narrative, Identity, and the Liberal Arts” that will be published by Routledge Publishing, the world’s leading academic publisher in the humanities and social sciences.

Multiple departments will work collaboratively to produce a book that will feature many unique narratives from different faculty members’ particular disciplines as well as their own work.

“One of the things humans do and probably what we’re known for best is telling stories,” said Paul Sivitz, an assistant lecturer in the Department of History and book co-editor. “We try to make sense out of the past and while we can write about it in, sometimes unfortunately, dry academic terms and theoretical terms, the most compelling historical narratives come across as stories about our human past.”

The book will feature eight chapters written by members of varying departments including communication, media and persuasion, psychology, and political science as well as one chapter featuring interviews with various performing arts faculty members.

“What all the authors do in their chapters is they first talk about their journey to narrative and how they became interested in narrative,” said Mark McBeth, the associate dean of social and behavior sciences and book co-editor. “Then they cover who is important in their field, what kind of books do they read, and what are their influences regarding narrative. They also talk about how they see themselves fitting into their respective college in terms of narrative followed by a substantive exploration of narrative in their discipline. Our goal at the end is to show how a political scientist might learn from a musician, or an actor, or a journalist.”

The editorial team must submit the first chapter by Oct. 30, 2015 with the publishing company requesting the finished book sent to them by January 2017, though the team believes they could be finished as early as next summer.

The team submitted their proposal to Routledge in May 2015 and received their first reviews in July.

“When the reviews came back and were really positive we were definitely excited,” said McBeth. “We had a strong proposal and the unique nature is that this is a college collaborating on a narrative project.”

They secured their contract in August, just three months after the initial proposal.

One of the reviews from Routledge stated, “there are many of us who know about techniques and studies in our own fields, but we seldom venture into the areas that will be in the proposed text. The book should/will promote cross-disciplinary conversations and possibly collaborative work.” 

The idea for writing the book came about because of a presentation addressed to the college.

As part of his sabbatical in 2012, McBeth worked on the narrative policy framework, which he presented to the department. Brian Attebery, an ISU English professor and book co-editor was present during this presentation and approached McBeth afterwards.

“I think he was taken aback a little that I was a political science professor and was working with narrative of all things,” said McBeth. “[Attebery] approached me and said ‘there seems to be a lot of interest in narrative, we should sponsor a panel within the college.’”

In November of 2012 Attebery put together a panel to discuss narrative and McBeth said there must have been about 50 to 60 people packed into a small conference room in the liberal arts building.

Following this popular panel discussion, Sivitz hosted a series of monthly narrative discussions.

“People line up for these discussions,” said Sivitz. “I actually have a waiting list every year because it’s the easiest thing to do. It’s fun and it’s amazing, the energy we have on a Friday afternoon.”

The discussions take place seven times a year, once a month from September to April and usually include a 20-minute talk about narrative led by two people, followed by a question and answer session.

Kandi Turley-Ames, dean of the College of Arts and Letters and book co-editor, attended these discussions and in order to address the issue of finding an identity within the college, came up with what she called a crazy idea, which would build this area of expertise around narrative.

“Maybe what we do is we write a college book,” said Turley-Ames. “We don’t know of anybody where a college has written their own book about their expertise across multiple disciplines.”

From that moment forward the group hasn’t slowed down since.

Narrative is the art of storytelling; it starts in one condition and ends at another, and includes character, a setting, a plot and possibly themes. It is an essential aspect of human pasts, presents and futures.

“Narrative is the primary vehicle for conveying historical knowledge,” said Attebery. There are even philosophical approaches that suggest narrative is one of the fundamental ways we know things, know the world and know ourselves. What we are hoping to do is to make use of this common interest to start talking to each other more and start sharing our different disciplinary perspectives to enrich each of the fields.”