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
a series of workshops on narrative across borders of difference
Aging in the 21st Century
Tonia Tsamouri
November 2020
“Ageing is shaped more by culture than biology, more by beliefs, customs, and traditions than by bodily changes”, writes Margaret Cruickshank. The well-known scholar focuses on how “ageing” becomes the process through which “ageism” appears. Medical science has progressed, ensuring that people will be able to live longer and better while enjoying the prospect of looking more youthful. Medical surgeries, anti-wrinkle creams, make-up and clothes actively encourage people, especially women, to desire to remain young forever since old people are assumed, at least in western cultures, to be ugly, frightening, depressing and boring. It is no accident that in literature and culture ageing tends to be marginalized. People over a certain age are denied the right to many things (i.e., to work, have a personal relationship or a social life), while at the same time they are treated, by the younger, as a social and financial burden.
This online seminar will examine the idea of “ageing” in our times, concentrating on theatre and social life. We will examine extracts from Edward Albee’s theatre plays, along with contemporary advertisements as well as photos and videos, placing special emphasis on how they narrate ageing. We might also consider how the Covid-19 pandemic has overturned scientific achievements and cultural expectations by bringing into focus the relation between age and people’s physical being, thus distinguishing people according to their biological age.
Podcast narratives
Maria Ristani
January 2021
In the last few years, podcasts have been gaining considerable momentum across much of the English-speaking world; rapid developments in sound technology and design, along with the growingly-smarter smartphones we all possess, have obviously facilitated such a boom, and audio-storytelling (in sad decline for many years) is now witnessing its spin-off renaissance. Non-fiction podcasts such as Serial or Radiolab originally set the stage, with audio-based fiction soon following suit. Both are now feeding on wide audiences to whom podcasters promise (and deliver) compelling “movies for [their] ears”.
This seminar sets out to familiarize students with podcast (fiction) narratives. What are the idiosyncrasies of the podcast medium? How does it differ from radio? What is the role afforded to sound and voice in the audio narrative world created? How do we as listeners/readers engage with it? In
this 3-hour workshop, we will be sharing, listening to and discussing short podcast excerpts to test out in practice what we’ll first explore and think through in theory.
Narrating Images: Telling Tales and the Pictorial Impetus
Yiorgos Paliatsios
April 2021
Let us think of a story, an experience to share, a thought that we want to express, a combination of words and meanings that can transpose us to a distant setting: a narrative that generates images. Now, let us consider a painting which signifies dimensions of ‘before’ and ‘after,’ an image that hides a story, a visual snapshot that twitches the thought to create sequels, a narrating image: we see it, we let go and something inside us narrates. Some may try to guess the creator’s intention(s), some may talk about interpretation, some may know, some may say they do not understand and others may allow their imagination to manifest, as if they were creators themselves.
Will we listen to images or will we eventually see narratives?
Let’s see …
Narrating in Whispered Confessions
Sophia Emmanouilidou and Katerina Kyvetou
May 2021, two sessions/two weeks apart
What is a confession? How can narrative cross the (un)marked borderline between the personal and the communal? Can self-identity be performed in a staged revelation? A confession is a public statement of one’s frame of mind, a performance of the urge to make one’s life an open book. And through our ‘confessional whispers,’ we explore the possibilities of releasing the mind (body and soul) from the dormant images of the past. This is a two-day workshop on narratives of confession and the art of whispering run by Dr. Sophia Emmanouilidou and Ms Katerina Kyvetou. We will explore some of the tensions in personal narrative, artless talk and improvisation. The workshop will introduce participants to the many merits of sharing through the creation of unmediated tales of being-in-the world. Our primary focus will be on the creation of discourse where the individual ‘I’ will transform into a collective ‘we’ in the form of short film narratives produced by the participants.
Narrative Crossings 2020-2021
