This Wednesday, I’ll be on a panel at UC Berkeley sponsored by American Cultures and facilitated by Victoria Robinson. As the theme is narrative and social justice, I’ll be talking about everything from social media memes to documentary storytelling.
Details from American Cultures:
Wednesday, November 14th, 4-6pm, 231 Wheeler Hall
Speakers: Regina Mason, Office of the Registrar * Jane Hammons, College Writing Program * Jen Schradie, Sociology/Berkeley Center for New Media
Storytelling is both an individual and collective task. It can transform localized and individual experiences and emotions into public knowledge and shared history. Stories can be useful and powerful ways of clarifying connections between subjects, of bringing many voices to the table and of understanding the complexity of American society. Storytelling can reveal the concealed, the silent and the multiple voices that often lie in the background.
And stories that are just good stories reveal themselves than more than that, as justice stories or resistance stories, as stories about race, social responsibility and being an active participant in change. By framing their own lives as stories, students are empowered to bring their own knowledge and thoughts to the larger classroom concepts and histories within the curriculum.
This roundtable of UC Berkeley scholars will address the interplay of storytelling and social justice. What does a good story sound like? Why do we tell stories, how do we tell stories? Whose stories get told? What are storytelling strategies? Why should we teach through stories? Why should we teach storytelling?
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