From Notes to Narrative

From Notes to Narrative
Author: Kristen Ghodsee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2016-05-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 022625769X

Ethnography centers on the culture of everyday life. So it is ironic that most scholars who do research on the intimate experiences of ordinary people write their books in a style that those people cannot understand. In recent years, the ethnographic method has spread from its original home in cultural anthropology to fields such as sociology, marketing, media studies, law, criminology, education, cultural studies, history, geography, and political science. Yet, while more and more students and practitioners are learning how to write ethnographies, there is little or no training on how to write ethnographies well. From Notes to Narrative picks up where methodological training leaves off. Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning ethnographer, addresses common issues that arise in ethnographic writing. Ghodsee works through sentence-level details, such as word choice and structure. She also tackles bigger-picture elements, such as how to incorporate theory and ethnographic details, how to effectively deploy dialogue, and how to avoid distracting elements such as long block quotations and in-text citations. She includes excerpts and examples from model ethnographies. The book concludes with a bibliography of other useful writing guides and nearly one hundred examples of eminently readable ethnographic books.

Tales of the Field

Tales of the Field
Author: John Van Maanen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2011-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0226849643

Once upon a time ethnographers returning from the field simply sat down, shuffled their note cards, and wrote up their descriptions of the exotic and quaint customs they had observed. Today scholars in all disciplines are realizing how their research is presented is at least as important as what is presented. Questions of voice, style, and audience--the classic issues of rhetoric--have come to the forefront in academic circles. John Van Maanen, an experienced ethnographer of modern organizational structures, is one who believes that the real work begins when he returns to his office with cartons of notes and tapes. In Tales of the Field he offers readers a survey of the narrative conventions associated with writing about culture and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of various styles. He introduces first the matter-of-fact, realistic report of classical ethnography, then the self-absorbed confessional tale of the participant-observer, and finally the dramatic vignette of the new impressionistic style. He also considers, more briefly, literary tales, jointly told tales, and the theoretically focused formal and critical tales. Van Maanen illustrates his discussion of each style with excerpts from his own work on the police. Tales of the Field offers an informal, readable, and lighthearted treatment of the rhetorical devices used to present the results of fieldwork. Though Van Maanen argues ultimately for the validity of revealing the self while representing a culture, he is sensitive to the differing methods and aims of sociology and anthropology. His goal is not to establish one true way to write ethnography, but rather to make ethnographers of all varieties examine their assumptions about what constitutes a truthful cultural portrait and select consciously and carefully the voice most appropriate for their tales. Written with grace and humor, Tales of the Field will be an invaluable introduction to novices just learning the fieldwork trade and provocative stimulant to veteran ethnographers. "Engaging and well written."--H. Ottenheimer, Choice

From Me to We

From Me to We
Author: Jason Griffith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2016-08-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317290070

With this practical book, you’ll learn effective ways to engage students in reading and writing by teaching them narrative nonfiction. By engaging adolescents in narrative, literary, or creative nonfiction, they can cultivate a greater understanding of themselves, the world around them, and what it means to feel empathy for others. This book will guide you to first structure a reading unit around a narrative nonfiction text, and then develop lessons and activities for students to craft their own personal essays. Topics include: Engaging your students in the reading of a nonfiction narrative with collaborative chapter notes, empathy check-ins, and a mini-research paper to deepen students’ understanding; Helping your students identify meaningful life events, recount their experiences creatively, and construct effective opening and closing lines for their personal essays; Encouraging your students to use dialogue, outside research, and a clear plot structure to make their narrative nonfiction more compelling and polished. The strategies in this book are supplemented by examples of student work and snapshots from the author’s own classroom. The book also includes interviews with narrative nonfiction writers MK Asante and Johanna Bear. The appendices offer additional tips for using narrative nonfiction in English class, text and online resources for teaching narrative nonfiction, and a correlation chart between the activities in this book and the Common Core Standards.

Time and Narrative, Volume 1

Time and Narrative, Volume 1
Author: Paul Ricoeur
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1990-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226713328

In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.

Houston, We Have a Narrative

Houston, We Have a Narrative
Author: Randy Olson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022627098X

Communicate more effectively about science—by taking a page from Hollywood and improving your storytelling skills. Ask a scientist about Hollywood, and you’ll probably get eye rolls. But ask someone in Hollywood about science, and they’ll see dollar signs: Moviemakers know that science can be the source of great stories, with all the drama and action that blockbusters require. That’s a huge mistake, says Randy Olson: Hollywood has a lot to teach scientists about how to tell a story—and, ultimately, how to do science better. With Houston, We Have a Narrative, he lays out a stunningly simple method for turning the dull into the dramatic. Drawing on his unique background, which saw him leave his job as a working scientist to launch a career as a filmmaker, Olson first diagnoses the problem: When scientists tell us about their work, they pile one moment and one detail atop another moment and another detail—a stultifying procession of “and, and, and.” What we need instead is an understanding of the basic elements of story, the narrative structures that our brains are all but hardwired to look for—which Olson boils down, brilliantly, to “And, But, Therefore,” or ABT. At a stroke, the ABT approach introduces momentum (“And”), conflict (“But”), and resolution (“Therefore”)—the fundamental building blocks of story. As Olson has shown by leading countless workshops worldwide, when scientists’ eyes are opened to ABT, the effect is staggering: suddenly, they’re not just talking about their work—they’re telling stories about it. And audiences are captivated. Written with an uncommon verve and enthusiasm, and built on principles that are applicable to fields far beyond science, Houston, We Have a Narrative has the power to transform the way science is understood and appreciated, and ultimately how it’s done.

Alive in the Writing

Alive in the Writing
Author: Kirin Narayan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2012-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0226568180

Anton Chekhov is revered as a boldly innovative playwright and short story writer - but he wrote more than just plays and stories. In this book, the author introduces readers to some other sides of Chekhov.

Narrative Economics

Narrative Economics
Author: Robert J. Shiller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691212074

From Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller, a groundbreaking account of how stories help drive economic events—and why financial panics can spread like epidemic viruses Stories people tell—about financial confidence or panic, housing booms, or Bitcoin—can go viral and powerfully affect economies, but such narratives have traditionally been ignored in economics and finance because they seem anecdotal and unscientific. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Shiller explains why we ignore these stories at our peril—and how we can begin to take them seriously. Using a rich array of examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that influence individual and collective economic behavior—what he calls "narrative economics"—may vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises and other major economic events. The result is nothing less than a new way to think about the economy, economic change, and economics. In a new preface, Shiller reflects on some of the challenges facing narrative economics, discusses the connection between disease epidemics and economic epidemics, and suggests why epidemiology may hold lessons for fighting economic contagions.

Inventing the New Negro

Inventing the New Negro
Author: Daphne Mary Lamothe
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2008-07-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0812240936

It is no coincidence, Daphne Lamothe writes, that so many black writers and intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century either trained formally as ethnographers or worked as amateur collectors of folklore and folk culture. In Inventing the New Negro Lamothe explores the process by which key figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, and Sterling Brown adapted ethnography and folklore in their narratives to create a cohesive, collective, and modern black identity. Lamothe explores how these figures assumed the roles of self-reflective translators and explicators of African American and African diasporic cultures to Western, largely white audiences. Lamothe argues that New Negro writers ultimately shifted the presuppositions of both literary modernism and modernist anthropology by making their narratives as much about ways of understanding as they were about any quest for objective knowledge. In critiquing the ethnographic framework within which they worked, they confronted the classist, racist, and cultural biases of the dominant society and challenged their readers to imagine a different set of relations between the powerful and the oppressed. Inventing the New Negro combines an intellectual history of one of the most important eras of African American letters with nuanced and original readings of seminal works of literature. It will be of interest not only to Harlem Renaissance scholars but to anyone who is interested in the intersections of culture, literature, folklore, and ethnography.

Narrative Inquiry

Narrative Inquiry
Author: D. Jean Clandinin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2004-08-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0787972762

"The literature on narrative inquiry has been, until now, widely scattered and theoretically incomplete. Clandinin and Connelly have created a major tour de force. This book is lucid, fluid, beautifully argued, and rich in examples. Students will find a wealth of arguments to support their research, and teaching faculty will find everything they need to teach narrative inquiry theory and methods."--Yvonna S. Lincoln, professor, Department of Educational Administration, Texas A&M University Understanding experience as lived and told stories--also known as narrative inquiry--has gained popularity and credence in qualitative research. Unlike more traditional methods, narrative inquiry successfully captures personal and human dimensions that cannot be quantified into dry facts and numerical data. In this definitive guide, Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly draw from more than twenty years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research. Tracing the origins of narrative inquiry in the social sciences, they offer new and practical ideas for conducting fieldwork, composing field notes, and conveying research results. Throughout the book, stories and examples reveal a wide range of narrative methods. Engaging and easy to read, Narrative Inquiry is a practical resource from experts who have long pioneered the use of narrative in qualitative research.

Writing and Rhetoric Book 2: Narrative 1

Writing and Rhetoric Book 2: Narrative 1
Author: Narrative Tchr
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Rhetoric
ISBN: 9781600512193

Writing & Rhetoric Book 2: Narrative 1 Teacher's Edition includes the complete student text, as well as answer keys, teacher's notes, and explanations. For every writing assignment, this edition also supplies diescriptions adn examples of what excellent student writing should look like, providing the teacher with meaningful and concrete guidance.