Course info

Many PhD students use sources that in one way or another contain narratives. This can be in interviews (with children, young people or adults; social movement activists; political leaders; etc.), as well as political documents and newspaper articles, digital narratives on social media, or archival data. We can also find narratives in art, museum exhibitions, films and TV-series.  Narratives are a way of making sense of the world around us.

 Narratives are located at different analytical levels: from the macro level related to for instance migration and gender regimes and the constructions of national identities and belonging; over the meso level focusing on organizations, voluntary associations and social movements to the micro level anchored in personal experiences, peoples everyday life and life courses. However most importantly, the narrative perspective is an analytical tool that can create interconnection between these levels. This means that although focus is on individual people’s life stories these stories are also sources of knowledge about collective memories and major social changes.

 Narratives produce meaning, articulate intentions and legitimize actions. The choice of different elements in a particular narrative reveals much about the teller of the narrative.  This includes that not everything is tellable – or possible to tell. Narratives are a form of communication and there are power relations at play between those who tell and those who listen, read or watch. This makes that the context in which for example autobiographical narratives are told by an interviewee to an interviewer can potentially include elements that can be difficult to tell. Here we can think of narratives about sexual violence or racism, bullying or other narratives that concern inequalities and injustices. Another example concerns collective narratives by social movement activists and the ways in which these are marginalized in the public sphere or on the political agendas of politicians or other powerful actors. Also in this case is not everything tellable. Individual and collective narratives relate to each other and narratives can be hegemonic, counter-hegemonic and/or marginalized in narrative struggles. 

Power relations in narrative struggles are especially important when considering narratives about memories of inequalities and in injustices relating to sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination. Recent mobilizations such as those relating to Black Lives Matter or #MeToo have for example raised political and social concerns over memories of colonialism, racism and sexism. Recent research in amongst others gender studies, memory studies, political science and sociology have pointed out the importance of intersectional and transnational approaches to the study of narratives of memories.  

The objective of the course is to give the PhD students skills in using different analytical approaches and methods to narrative analyses, including biographical narrative methods and strategic narrative methods (in the study of political communication), as well as in using intersectional and transnational approaches. Another aim is to provide knowledge in theories on memories, in specific as this concerns recent research on transnational memory politics and the nexus between memories and activism.