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Storytelling

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Full-Text Articles in Critical and Cultural Studies

Storytelling For Social Change: Using Victim Narratives From Social Media To Disrupt Rape Myth Acceptance Among College Students, Grace Carmack May 2024

Storytelling For Social Change: Using Victim Narratives From Social Media To Disrupt Rape Myth Acceptance Among College Students, Grace Carmack

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study employed a narrative intervention experiment aimed at challenging college students' acceptance of rape myths (RMA). Rape myths are erroneous beliefs that shift blame for sexual violence (SV) from perpetrators to victims and encompass stereotypical misconceptions about women. Three authentic narratives, shared anonymously on social media by college victims of sexual violence, were selected for their varying levels of graphic detail and situational context. The study's objective was not only to interrogate RMA among college students but also to discover which of the three narratives was most effective in reducing RMA among readers, utilizing the Transportation Theory as a …


Taking Youth Voices Seriously: Theatre, Storytelling, And Empowerment With Refugee Youth In Memphis, Tn, Taylor St. John Oct 2021

Taking Youth Voices Seriously: Theatre, Storytelling, And Empowerment With Refugee Youth In Memphis, Tn, Taylor St. John

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

This project report documents the most recent play-turned-podcast in a multi-year partnership between the Orpheum Theatre Group and the Refugee Empowerment Program in Memphis, TN. Youth from the program have been engaging in From Where I Stand, a theatrical storytelling program that weaves first-person narratives into theatrical performances that are presented for the community. While our third performance entitled, Refugee Portraits, was postponed due to the pandemic, it was given new life in the form of a podcast. This report will explore the process of creating the live theatrical performance, pivoting that performance to a podcast, and reflect on …


Using Visual Storytelling To Design Solutions-Based Approaches To Homelessness, Peggy Peattie Aug 2021

Using Visual Storytelling To Design Solutions-Based Approaches To Homelessness, Peggy Peattie

Dissertations

Despite millions of dollars spent over several decades on assistance programs, the nation’s homeless population has increased for the last four years in a row. The number of people reporting as homeless for the first time doubled in San Diego between June 2019 and June 2020. Trying to impose a one-size-fits-all model of care on a population comprised of unique individuals has resulted in many homeless opting for the street rather than subjugating themselves to rules they feel do not treat them with respect and dignity. Yet, the perspectives of homeless individuals are excluded from decision-making dialogue around policies and …


“We Just Didn’T Talk About It:” Strategies Of Stigmatized Grief Management, Claire D. Selleck May 2021

“We Just Didn’T Talk About It:” Strategies Of Stigmatized Grief Management, Claire D. Selleck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the experiences of people who have lost loved ones due to socially stigmatized deaths. Drawing from eight individual interviews, the author argues that the stigma associated with death due to drug overdose, suicide, substance abuse, or murder can cause traumatic or prolonged grief and can complicate the way the bereaved talk about grief as a part of their healing process. With the mortality rate in the U.S. rising, there is an epidemic of disenfranchised grief affecting millions of bereaved individuals. Using Coordinated Management of Meaning and Communication Privacy Management theories, the author uncovers strategies the traumatically bereaved …


Communicated Perspective-Taking (Cpt) And Storylistening: Testing The Impact Of Cpt In The Context Of Friends Telling Stories Of Difficulty, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jonathan Baker, Megan Cardwell, Mackensie Minniear, Haley Kranstuber Hortsman Jan 2020

Communicated Perspective-Taking (Cpt) And Storylistening: Testing The Impact Of Cpt In The Context Of Friends Telling Stories Of Difficulty, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jonathan Baker, Megan Cardwell, Mackensie Minniear, Haley Kranstuber Hortsman

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Grounded in communicated narrative sense-making theory (CNSM), the purpose of the current study was to test the effects of storylisteners’ communicated perspective taking (CPT) on storytellers’ well-being and evaluations of storylisteners’ communication skills in the context of telling stories about difficulty. Pairs of friends (n = 37) engaged in a storytelling interaction in which one person told a story of a difficult life experience (DLE). Listeners’ CPT was rated by observers using the Communicated Perspective-Taking Rating System (CPTRS) and tellers reported on listeners’ behaviors and their own psychosocial health. Results indicate that observed CPT relates positively to tellers’ perceptions …


Stories Of Color: An Exploration Of Storytelling And Racial Microaggression, Tama Lunceford Dec 2019

Stories Of Color: An Exploration Of Storytelling And Racial Microaggression, Tama Lunceford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines experiences of racial microaggressions as related to an audience through the art of Storytelling. Integrating Performance Ethnography and Critical Race Theory, it examines how storytelling may serve to illuminate the concept of racial microaggressions. After examining the current body of work on Racism, Storytelling and Microaggression, the author moves through the stories of experiences with racial microaggression from four individuals, gathered and performed as a storytelling event, before a live audience. The communicative management methods individuals use when talking about race and racial microaggressions are explored in presentation of the audience discussion which followed the performance. The …


Communication Infrastructure Theory: A Rural Application, Callie S. Embry Aug 2019

Communication Infrastructure Theory: A Rural Application, Callie S. Embry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The health of a community’s communication infrastructure influences their efficacy and efficiency in dealing with societal problems. The majority of previous communication infrastructure research has focused on multicultural urban centers. This study looks at the communication infrastructure of one rural Arkansas town, specifically looking for the places residents report as communication assets and the subjects discussed within the storytelling network. I used a combination of communication asset mapping and semi-structured interviews to identify the physical locations within the community where residents regularly converse with one another. The interviews along with observations also provided insight into the subject matter that residents …


Literary Exposures For An Ecological Age, Christy Call Aug 2017

Literary Exposures For An Ecological Age, Christy Call

The Goose

This paper argues that exposures through literature to human fragility and vulnerability, which are default modes of life within the relational collective on-page, rehearse critical engagements for life off-page during a time of climate change.


Reading Speculative Futures In A Post-Truth World, Rachel Webb Jekanowski Aug 2017

Reading Speculative Futures In A Post-Truth World, Rachel Webb Jekanowski

The Goose

Faced with the threat of a “post-truth” world and a widening chasm of exchange between climate change deniers and environmentalists, I argue that future-orientated literary and media speculative fictions—which I term “speculative futures”—offer a means of building lines of communication across social and political divisions. This thought piece on “The Environmental Humanities in a Post-Truth World” mediates upon the potentiality of speculative futures as theory, social bridge-building, and pedagogical tool. Speculative fictions (especially those that address environmental justice, and anti-colonial and feminist politics) use storytelling and future imaginaries to challenge political falsehoods and imagine more ecological, de-colonized futures.


Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman May 2017

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …


Students Staging Resistance: Pedagogy/Performance/Praxis, Patrick Santoro, Uriah Berryhill, Lois Nemeth, Rebecca Townsend, Deirdre Webb Aug 2016

Students Staging Resistance: Pedagogy/Performance/Praxis, Patrick Santoro, Uriah Berryhill, Lois Nemeth, Rebecca Townsend, Deirdre Webb

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

This essay archives and reimagines a collaborative student performance—inJUSTICE—developed as part of a performance and social change course. Working within the framework of critical pedagogy, the intents of this piece are several: to offer strategies for teaching a course on performing resistance and mentoring students in the development of original work; to provide insight into how students, primarily at the undergraduate level, process performance in the context of social change, as well as apply course concepts and practices in their own performance work; and to affirm a body-centered, performative pedagogy in the classroom. Also included is a video of the …


Imaginative Acts Of Resistance: Dramatic Storytelling In An Elementary School Classroom, Shannon K. Mcmanimon Aug 2016

Imaginative Acts Of Resistance: Dramatic Storytelling In An Elementary School Classroom, Shannon K. Mcmanimon

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

This critical ethnographic project draws upon literature on imagination, critical literacy, and theatre to explore a sixth-grade class’s participation in a critical literacy and creative drama program. Through examples from the storytelling practices of the Neighborhood Bridges program, I outline how students and teachers (including a teaching artist) imagined, co-created, and revised storylines in their classroom; this collaboration provides an alternative to the common narrative of the constrained urban public school classroom. The resulting imaginative acts of resistance: 1) encourage and empower urban elementary students to enact relevant, collaborative community in their classrooms; 2) engage meaningful—not just functional—literacies; 3) ask …


Love On - The Life Of A Suicide Survivor: A Performance Autoethnographic Study, Patricia R. Wheeler May 2016

Love On - The Life Of A Suicide Survivor: A Performance Autoethnographic Study, Patricia R. Wheeler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Suicide touches the lives of millions of people each year in this country alone, yet conversations about suicide loss and survival after a loss remain taboo and often do not happen. The story I performed for this performance autoethnographic study centers on my life as a survivor of suicide. It provides a starting point for dialog regarding trauma, grief, and suicide loss. The narrative was constructed directly following the sudden death of my father, which had a direct effect on my ability to produce artistic work. The development, staging and performance of the story were altered to account for the …


Facebook: The Alienation From Oneself, Kaitlin F. Knapp Jan 2016

Facebook: The Alienation From Oneself, Kaitlin F. Knapp

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

We live in the Age of Information: a time when technology has advanced in speed and the number of ways people can communicate has increased. Social media is one such advancement; this thesis will focus specifically on the consequences of the site Facebook. The mission statement of the Facebook company is “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” While Facebook serves as a document of its users’ lives, through its unique process of documentation, Facebook alienates the user from the image of herself that she intended to create. This thesis uses the …


Between Two Worlds: Stories Of The Second-Generation Black Caribbean Immigrant, Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot Jul 2014

Between Two Worlds: Stories Of The Second-Generation Black Caribbean Immigrant, Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot

Trotter Review

People have an endless fascination with character information since it helps us to predict the behavior of those we interact with (King, Rumbaugh, and Savage-Rumbaugh 1999). Stories or narratives serve as an extension of this fascination. They help us make better decisions even without supplying immediate information. When we each talk about the past, our stories not only disclose currently relevant social particulars, but also provide tools for reasoning about action—our own and others’. In many instances, the stories we tell offer explanations of an outcome that resulted when we acted upon something—or serve as indirect memories of a place …


Telling Tales As Oral Performance: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Storytelling In Ireland, Scotland And Southern Appalachia, Annalee Tull May 2014

Telling Tales As Oral Performance: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Storytelling In Ireland, Scotland And Southern Appalachia, Annalee Tull

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I sought to link, through this paper, cultural performances of identity through storytelling in Ireland, Scotland, and southern Appalachia. I evaluated storytelling practices, whether it was a public or private performance, using symbolic interactionism, dramatist theory, narrative paradigm, and performance theory. The author studied abroad in Ireland and Scotland through the East Tennessee State University Appalachian, Scottish, and Irish Studies Program and experienced an array of stories. She then evaluated her own experiences with storytelling from growing up in southern Appalachia and visited the International Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. The research is rooted in grounded theory from ethnographies, with …


Quality Interactions And Family Storytelling, Allison R. Thorson, Christine E. Rittenour, Jody Koenig Kellas, April R. Trees Jul 2013

Quality Interactions And Family Storytelling, Allison R. Thorson, Christine E. Rittenour, Jody Koenig Kellas, April R. Trees

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study examined how individuals’ satisfaction with their family, as well as the ways they negotiated the telling of a family story, combined to predict their perceived quality of the storytelling interaction. Drawing from family members’ (150 individuals, 50 families) joint telling of an often told family story, multilevel modeling analyses revealed significant variance within and between families’ perceived quality of their storytelling interaction. These variances were explained by family satisfaction and family-level ratings of engagement during storytelling. These findings drive our suggestions for future assessment of multiple members’ perspectives of joint family storytelling interactions.


Telling Tales: Enacting Family Relationships In Joint Storytelling About Difficult Family Experiences, April R. Trees, Jody Koenig Kellas Jan 2009

Telling Tales: Enacting Family Relationships In Joint Storytelling About Difficult Family Experiences, April R. Trees, Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Narratives help people make sense of difficult experiences. In addition, stories provide insight into people’s conceptualizations of the world, including their understanding of their family relationships. Given these two functions of storytelling, the ways in which family members tell stories about difficult experiences together should reveal or reflect relational qualities. This project focused on how the family relational context relates to jointly enacted sense-making behaviors as families tell stories of shared difficult experiences. Findings indicate that interactional sense-making behaviors, in particular coherence and perspective-taking, predict important family relational qualities. This suggests that family qualities affect and are reflected in the …


Family Legacies: Constructing Individual And Family Identity Through Intergenerational Storytelling, Blair Thompson, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jordan Soliz, Jason Thompson, Amber Epp, Paul Schrodt Jan 2009

Family Legacies: Constructing Individual And Family Identity Through Intergenerational Storytelling, Blair Thompson, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jordan Soliz, Jason Thompson, Amber Epp, Paul Schrodt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The current study focused on discovering the ways in which the intergenerational transmission of family legacy stories both enables and constrains individual family members’ sense of their own identities. Using semistructured interviews, 17 third-generation family members identified a multitude of both positive and negative family legacies. Both positive and negative legacies were influenced by the storytelling context. Positive legacies portrayed families as hardworking, caring, and cohesive while negative legacies were more idiosyncratic. Individual family members typically responded to their family legacies by embracing the positive and rejecting the negative. However, individuals’ responses also pointed to additional complexities in accepting or …


Family Stories As Indicators Of The Family Dynamic, Allison Clarkson Apr 2007

Family Stories As Indicators Of The Family Dynamic, Allison Clarkson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

An important element of the family unit involves the stories that are often told and retold. Although the collection of stories varies among families, the themes within these stories are sometimes common across different families. Within this research, certain patterns were shown to recur regarding these story themes. Furthermore, a positive relationship was found between families’ stories and the characteristics that are used to describe the families.