ENG 6283: Narrative Theory

A few years ago, I was doing research for a paper on fanfiction and came across a Wordpress account about different bending narratives, or narratives that change some aspect of the characters. In the top left corner of the main page was an image with a hashtag: #starringjohncho. Intrigued by the images, I clicked the link and found a series of narratives unlike anything most would call narrative, but telling stories nonetheless. The social media movement centered on two things: John Cho and Hollywood whitewashing. We’ve mostly moved past displays of painfully blatant whitewashing, like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s , but there is still a persistent trend of casting white actors as characters of color, then denying actors of color the opportunities for white roles or roles of undetermined race. It’s a maddening cycle that perpetuates racism in Hollywood, because the producers say there are no big name actors of color, but they refuse to make them. #starringjohncho looks to...

As most people know, I am a huge reality TV fan. Not in an "oh, yeah, it's guilty pleasure that I watch when nothing else is on!" way. Like, in a "Lisa Vanderpump is my role model and I love Vanderpump Rules and The Real Housewives more than I love anything else right now" kind of way. So much so, that I recently bought Vanderpump star, Stassi Schroders book, Next Level Basic where she talks about taking the narrative of being basic back from haters and embracing it. This is the art of the basic bitch, and I am here to discuss how it is a counter-narrative to hating things that predominately women have made popular. According to Dictionary.com, "In slang,  basic  characterizes someone or something as unoriginal, unexceptional, and mainstream. A basic girl—or basic bitch as she is often insulted—is said to like pumpkin spice lattes, UGG boots, and taking lots of selfies, for instance." Now, I trade in the pumpkin spice lattes for hazelnut lattes....

A few weeks ago, we had a blog prompt asking us to describe a time that we found out that the narrative we'd constructed of an event, person, thing, etc. was vastly different from that of another person's narrative of that same thing. I avoided posting that week because the only instances of mistaken narratives I could think of were traumatic instances, and I didn't have the will or energy to put those stories out there. However, I did think of another one I feel safe sharing with y'all. About two or three years ago at Thanksgiving time, all of my family had gathered at my parents' house in the small rural town I grew up in. We were all together, having a great time, eating, watching football, talking, the works. At some point, my dad gets my attention and asks me to come into the kitchen. He says I've gotten a weird package in the mail. I come in and look at the parcel and stop dead in my tracks. I see a gray wooden crate, nailed shut, and no markings as to...

Do you like taking pictures? Do you like to travel? Does writing fuel a fire deep within your soul? If so, you should explore travel writing & photography!  I'd like to create a series of workshops that address the ways people can enhance their pieces of travel writing & travel photography for larger audiences. In the past decade there’s been a huge surge in personalized publishing regarding travel narratives and digital storytelling—on Amazon alone there’s hundreds of self-made travel stories popping up. There’s tons of websites that contain packages where people can self-publish hardback, glossy-filled photography books for their coffee tables. Sharing and retelling travel stories via written narrative and photography is a surging method of networking and self-improvement in terms of communicating effectively and enhancing multicultural, communal narratives. Communication is becoming ever more reliant on digital mediums to expand the craft of conver...

My junior and senior years in undergrad, I had to take “professional development” courses. These were courses aimed at helping us get jobs within the scope of our major once we were out in the real world. The one put together by the theatre department was a full semester, involving research about good theatre cities and how to put together an appropriate headshot and resume. The class for English majors was half a semester and focused on putting together a website to showcase your writing skills. Neither of these has been helpful. Don’t get me wrong. What little coding I learned for the website inspired me to learn more, and I got some ideas about what cities I would and would not want to live in. However, these courses have left me woefully unprepared for what kind of things the job market actually expects. I didn’t know how to format a resume until I googled it. I didn’t know what to put in a cover letter until my roommate showed me hers. I’m still not sure how to write a pers...

On April 24, 1915 hundreds of Armenian scholars and businessmen were rounded up and executed by a political group called the Young Turks. This horrendous act marked the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, during which 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Those who were caught running and weren’t immediately murdered were pushed out into the desert on death marches towards concentration camps. These death marches were hidden under the legal guise of “deportation.” What occurred in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 is not so much a lost narrative - it is far from forgotten - but it is a distorted and corrupted narrative. The Turkish government has gone to great lengths to deny the genocide, hiding their horrendous actions with mass propaganda. The Turkish Nationalists spread confusion through the erasure of records, publication of false “truths,” and interference of the raising of memorial monuments in countries that took in Armenian refugees. They even have given key members of the...

The question of whether or not narrative works are inherently rhetorical is pretty complicated. I think it all comes down to what one believes about rhetoric.  By the layperson’s definition, rhetorical works are inherently deceitful and generally malicious. Because rhetoric is speech or text that has the specific aim of persuading the audience or reader to change their mind or act in some way, it is seen as a kind of speech with a dark, manipulative agenda. On the other hand, an academic’s view of rhetoric and its function is much more complicated. In general, there is no negative aura surrounding the topic. To those who study rhetoric, it is simply speech which is meant to persuade, typically through the use of specific formal mechanisms like ethos, pathos, logos, etc. Rhetoric, to the academic, has the goal of informing the audience, persuading the audience, or calling the audience to action.  Certainly, narrative can be used as a tool within the practice of ...