240505 VO Working with Narratives: Methodological and Theoretical Approaches (P2) (2019S)

Narratives are central in the work of anthropologists. Anthropologists do not only encounter and study narratives but also elicit and (co-)create narratives, whether through ethnographic observation, by conducting interviews or through their analysis and writing of ethnographic accounts. This lecture series offers insight into recent approaches to and entanglements with narrative in light of recent methodological and theoretical considerations.
Themes such as narrative and identity, narrative and temporality, or ethnography, voice and the role of the anthropologist, will be explored in different ethnographic contexts (families, migration, refuge, development, city planning, place-making). Methodological considerations will include discussions of interdisciplinary approaches such as linguistic anthropology and oral history as well as recent ethnographic interventions like memory-guided city walks and digital and visual narrative approaches.

The lecture consists of an input lecture on the core topics (supported by ethnographic and descriptive examples) and the discussion of the compulsory reading of key texts. The lecture is supported by multimedia teaching material and will make use of the e-learning platform Moodle.