Olivia Love
Staff Writer
ISU will host a free, one-day narrative conference in the Idaho Museum of Natural History on April 8.
The event will have seven speakers in total, several from around the region and one all the way from Israel.
“We have participants from the University of Idaho, Weber State and Washington College in Israel,” said Paul Sivitz, the coordinator of the conference.
In addition, two members from ISU’s English Department will present.
All the presenters will discuss narrative and how it relates to research they are doing in their field.
Topics include the relation of narratives to the NFL and professional sports, murder in the media, outlaws and a game-ified classroom.
“The thing that connects them all is the theme of narrative. Something that has a beginning, middle and an end,” Sivitz said.
The conference is a chance for presenters to share what they have researched and to discuss what they talk about with a panel and the audience.
However, this narrative conference is taking on a new format.
“We’re doing this in a newer kind of conference style where the participants submit a 1,000 to 1,250-word summary of their big paper,” Sivitz said.
This makes it easier for the panelists to read all of the papers since they only have to read a five to six-page summary instead of a 25-page paper.
Sivitz said this style of conference has been shown to be much more effective as it gives the presenters time to go into more detail when they present and then have a discussion with the panel and audience members.
The conference is also a chance for attendees to see how relevant narrative is in their own lives.
Sivitz described how people’s lives are, in many ways, ongoing narratives, so narratives provide another interdisciplinary way for people learn.
“I think it’s important because we love to tell stories,” said Melissa Lee, coordinator of marketing and recruiting at the College of Arts and Letters. “It’s a good way to learn outside of an academic setting and we learn better by using storytelling elements,” The narrative conference will show people the significance of narrative, but will also provide different views on topics that are part of everyday discussions.
“Multiple methods provide us with a richer understanding of whatever we’re trying to make sense of,” said Professor Kandi Turley-Ames, dean of the College of Arts and Letters. “If we really want to understand something and really be able to appreciate it, being able to see the narrative and the stories behind the way people think and the way they reason and how they’re influenced are important things that we need to be able to understand and look at.”
The whole event is part of a larger developing project in the College of Arts and Letters that revolves around narrative.
Several of the presenters are graduate students from other universities, so students who attend the event will get to see the kinds of things that go on when they choose to attend graduate school.
“We want everyone in the area to understand that we have this expertise here and we can collaborate or they can send students our way,” Turley-Ames said. “This was our first attempt at building those relationships. We hope to next year make it bigger.”
