The Laboratory of Narrative Research (LNR) is a teaching and research unit that is part of the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It has been designed to bring together scholars and researchers from across the humanities, the social sciences and other scientific fields who have a special interest in the workings and the politics of narrative production.
Lab Director: Dr Effie Yiannopoulou
Overview
This is a series of seminars that are addressed to students and will focus on the ways narratives travel across borders of difference, be they differences of form, medium or disciplinary knowledge and methodology. This year’s seminars aim, specifically, to explore narrative forms that go beyond written and/or spoken verbal signs. We will discover the narrative possibilities of different medial environments (i.e. sound, still images, new media etc.) and see how such non-verbal narrative forms guide and shift our narrative experience when interacting with verbal ones. Each seminar focuses on a different narrative form, which participants will be invited to explore both through theoretical discussion and hands-on experiment.
Seminars
The seminars scheduled for the following months (October 2019-May 2020) are:
“Narrating Tales of Fairies and Tails”
Sophia Emmanouilidou
October 2019
Why do we love fairy tales? What part of us revels in the limitless possibilities of a strange, magical world? This is a three-hour workshop on folk tales, fables and parables run by Dr. Sophia Emmanouilidou. We will explore the elements, motifs and conventions of the talesthat define human cultures around the world and throughout time. The workshop will allow participants to enter (freely) the realms of fantasy and to converse with fairies, animals and the supernatural. Our primary focus will be on the generic quality of folk tales, the relevance of wonder tales in contemporary societies, and the creation of an ecodiscourse with the animal world in the form of a creative writing workshop.
“Embracing Voices: On Polyphonic Narratives”
Vasiliki Misiou
December 2019
Can a novel create meaning using a chorus of disparate voices and narrative styles? What happens when plot lines intersect, and conventional linear reading patterns are disrupted? What is the relationship among author, reader and characters?Is there a dialogic space?
This is a three-hour seminar on multifaceted and multi-voiced stories, on the narrative told and untold. We will explore examples in which voice, form and content act on a fluvial continuum while celebrating interactivity and the building of coherent narrative out of fragments. We will attempt to experience new ways of seeing, play with voices, embrace contradiction, go beyond the author’s style and persona, and negotiate our narrative self in today’s world.
“Fork Narratives and Interactive Storytelling in ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch'”
Giorgos Dimitriadis
February 2020
The presentation will be an approach to multiple-ending narratives and they way they incorporate choice and open-endedness in visual narratives. The viewers’ active engagement is a necessary requirement for the story not only to progress but also to actually reach an ending; this procedure, now technically feasible with streaming services, blurs the fourth wall between movie and viewer in a novel way, effectively placing the latter in control of the fictional world on screen. But does that control really exist, or is it a device that simply disguises the inescapable finiteness of storytelling?
“Augmented Reality: Storytelling”
Lizzy Pournara
March 2020
How do we tell stories? What happens when our stories come to life through the “magic-mirror” format experience provided by the computer’s webcamera? How can we bring together cutting edge technological tools with the narration of stories? In this workshop, we will discuss the techniques and strategies employed in the creation of AR narratives, and explore through hands-on experience the storytelling potential of augmented reality.
“Narratives and Children’s Truth(s) over Cancer”
Vinia Dakari and Dimitra Sokratous
April 2020
Based on a children’s book – «Η Μαίρη και το Λευκό Μπιζέλι» (author: Δήμητρα Σωκράτους). Activating the participants’ imagination, thoughts and feelings, this is a workshop that will initiate them into the world of children’s narratives and truths over cancer.
“Let’s Walk in Sound”
Vasilis Delioglanis and Maria Ristani
May 2020
Bring along a pair of earphones and get ready to walk in sound!
Narrative Crossings 2019-2020