ANTH 255: Culture, Performance, and Personal Narrative

This course will look at personal narratives—the stories people tell about their own lives and experiences—as objects of artistic expression and sites for the formation of individual and social identity. How do we learn to narrate, and what makes something a“good story” or a person a “good storyteller?” How can the performance of personal narratives be a flexible (and plausibly deniable) tool for a variety of social functions: bids for sympathy, claims to authority, ethical and political arguments, offers of advice or criticism? The first half of the semester will focus on “live” storytelling in conversational contexts, particularly the relationship between story, setting, and a co-present audience. From there, we will expand outward to look at increasingly less involved listeners: from group therapy sessions and courtroom juries to stand-up comedy audiences and social media followers. As new technologies allow artfully told firsthand experiences to reach ever more remote publics, how do personal narratives operate on a more-than-personal scale, influencing journalism, law, medicine, and global politics?