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English 846: Narrative Research
Narrative Paper
Dr. Gian Pagnucci
Course Paper Overview
Each student in the
class will be asked to write a narrative research paper of their
choosing. We’ll share these narratives together in class as a community
of writers, reading drafts of the papers at various stages. We’ll also
discuss the craft of writing powerful narratives.
Freedom of
Expression
I want to encourage you to feel
free to experiment with this paper. In fact, I want you to feel safe to
write anything you'd like to for this class. Use this class as your one
chance to write a paper in which you are unconstrained.
Paper Genres
You may write on any topic you choose using any sort of genre you find
useful. While I don't want to limit your choices, I do know some writers
are helped by being given a starting point. So below are some basic
ideas you might wish to explore. Again, let me emphasize that I am not
requiring or stressing any one of these forms over any other. In fact,
what will please me the most is for you to pick a topic/genre that you
really feel moved to focus upon in your writing.
-
educational
narrative: you might wish to try writing a story about a
school-based experience, perhaps about something that happened in a
class you taught or were taking; these types of narratives are the
ones you would have the best chance of publishing in an academic
journal; these types of narratives are also usually good starting
points for narrative-based dissertations
-
research
narrative: you might wish to try your hand at conducting and
reporting a mini-narrative research project; for example, you could
try interviewing a person (perhaps an important family member like
an elderly relative), recording some of their life stories, then
writing and interpreting those stories for an audience of
teachers/scholars
-
creative
non-fiction story: you might wish to write a narrative about an
experience you have had, or someone you know has had, that was not
school-related; these types of stories often can serve as entry
points into issues important to your view of education and/or life;
sometimes these make for good early chapters in a dissertation to
help explain the researcher's personal relationship to the
dissertation topic
-
fictional
short story: you might want to make up a story as a way to help
you explore the craft of writing a good story
-
exposition of
a narrative-based issue: you may wish to write about some issue
of central importance to narrative research, such as the importance
of writing the "truth" or the nature of "framing" stories
-
analysis of a
narrative: you might want to take a narrative, perhaps a
published one or a student paper or family story, and explore how
the story is constructed, what its significance is, and how the
story works as a piece of research and/or fiction; this type of
paper would likely draw on your knowledge of literary analysis
-
hypertext
story: if you are more technologically inclined, you might
perhaps enjoy creating a multi-branched story using the
web/hypertext
-
alternative
forms: while I'm pushing stories in this course, you might find
it meaningful to create a paper that makes use of some alternate
form or genre; you could, for example, incorporate poetry, lyrics,
or art into your writing, perhaps exclusively; there are probably
many other sorts of approaches you might take with the paper and you
are welcome to explore anything you feel would help you personally
develop, especially since narrative research is, in general, very
sympathetic to and supportive of helping people to find their own
voices, however those voices might best be expressed
Collaboration
Option
Most students tend to write individual papers. However, if you feel
that a collaborative approach to this paper would be useful for you to
experiment with, that is also fine. Writing collaboratively might allow
you to create a play or some other type of multi-voiced text.
Story Framing
During the course, we'll spend time talking about how to frame
stories, that is, how to link narratives to outside sources, especially
academic sources. People often wrestle with this issue of framing as
they write their papers, however, especially if they are writing their
first narrative paper. So, while I certainly encourage you to work
references into your paper if you can do so in a meaningful way
(footnotes, for instance, are a nice way to include citations without
breaking the flow of your piece), you are NOT required to include any
references if you don't want to. In fact, you might even find it
liberating to write a paper where you deliberately try not to make
references. On the other hand, I do want you to know up front that it is
easiest to publish narrative research in academic journals if you
include outside sources; publishers and journal editors are definitely
biased in favor of reviewing the relevant literature.
Take a Chance &
Trust Yourself
I want you to believe that this is a chance for you to experiment,
to make mistakes, to try something new. I'd prefer that. I'm not looking
for you to create a perfect, polished piece (I can help you move toward
that later). Instead, I want you to stretch yourself, push yourself, try
to really learn. So, you might find that writing about a story which is
nagging at you, but which you can't quite understand, would be a great
learning experience. In my experience, stories that seem important to
us, though we're not really sure why, are, ultimately, the best stories
for us to write because they hold keys to our understanding of the
world. (Of course, I should warn you, those stories are often quite a
lot of work to write.) What I'd love best, then, is for you to write a
story/paper which teaches you about yourself. If you can achieve that,
you'll have taken a key step into a narrative life.
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