Narrative and Personal & Social Transformation

Atlanta, GA. USA

Mercer University

May 16-19, 2022

“Stories are not static. Telling a story through a novel, movie, speech, or a conversation–causes things to happen. No matter how great or small, moods change, minds change, and lives change. Narratives possess power to move and transform us on several levels of our lives: intellectual, emotional, moral, spiritual, and political.” — Mercer: Narrative Matters 2022

Featured Topics

  • Cultural Transformation

  • Medicine and Healthcare

  • The Struggle for Human Rights

  • Transformational Reminiscence

  • Therapy / Personal Growth

  • Spiritual Development

  • Teaching and Learning

  • Qualitative Inquiry

  • The Ethics of Storytelling

  • Literary Theory

  • Technology

  • Media

Organizers

  • Don Redmond, Mercer Univeristy

  • Richard LaFleur, Univeristy of West Georgia

Outcomes

A Special Issue of Narrative Works, Narrative and Personal Social Transformation, was published in 2023 featuring several presentations from this conference. Read the editors’ introduction to the special issue here.

Keynote and Featured Speakers

  • Derrick P. Alridge

  • Molly Andrews

  • Mark Freeman

  • Arthur Frank

  • Dr. Ruthellen Josselson

  • Dan P. McAdams

  • Hanna Meretoja

  • William Randall

  • Brian Schiff

  • Karen Skerrett

  • Gerben J. Westerhof

  • Isabel Wilkerson

PRESENTATIONS

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Derrick Alridge
Featured: Oral History as ‘Soul Work’: Listening to and Retelling the Stories of Civil Rights Era Teachers

Molly Andrews and Mark Freeman.
Featured: Narrative and Politics: Challenge and Opportunities.

Stephen Bacon
Resolving the Common Factors versus Evidence-Based Practice Debate: Supporting an Evolving Constructionist Model of Psychotherapy

Albert Banerjee.
Exploring the narrative opportunities of climate change and the crisis of care.

Adele Baruch
Listening to Stories of Courage and Moral Choice

Arla Bernstein and Robert Helfenbein
Community Violence as a Mental Health Narrative: A Case Study

Bodil Blix
The Travelling and Turns of Being and Becoming a Narrative Inquirer

Louis Boynton and Richard La Fleur
Narratives of Health and Wellbeing: A New Hope for Reducing the Stigma in Psychotherapy

Linda Buchanan.
Stuck in the Story: Buchanan Four Phase Model of Narrative Therapy.

Hanna Cespedes and Halle Matula
Exploration into the experiences of counselor educators with dual relationships

Jared Champion
Repeating the Punches: Christopher Titus, Storytelling, and Traumatic Manhood

Henry (Raffles) Cowan
Narrative identity in mental illness

Theresa Chrisman
Effectiveness of Life Story Book for Reducing Depression in Nursing Homes Residents without Cognitive Impairment

Tim Craker
Modernity/Coloniality and Narrative Ethics

Colin Davis
Who’s that Girl?: Telling the Story of Catherine Hessling, the Woman Who Wasn’t There

Cherry Estellhome
African American Christian Clergy Engaging in Pastoral Care and Counseling and Affirmative Counseling with Sexual Minorities

Caroline Fernandes
Discovering Purposeful Meaning in Spiritually Transformative Experiences to Re-author Traumatic Childhood Narratives

Arthur Frank.
Keynote: Why Wounded Storytellers Need to be Vulnerable Readers.

Mark Freeman
Writing and Publishing Narrative Research and Scholarship

Louis Grann
Player, Protagonist, and Plot: A Narrative-Thematic Exploration into Narrative (Identity) Play in Video Gaming

Tabitha Holmes
When Too Much Information is A Good Thing: Public Performances of Personal Narratives

Gail Hornstein
“I became a human being”: The transformational power of narrative in peer-support groups for voice hearers

Stefan Iversen
Transforming Assumptions: The Rhetoric of Metanoic Reflexivity

Magdala Lissa Jeudy.
Normative Narratives in Émile Zola’s L’assommoir

Ruthellen Josselson
Featured: Interviewing for Narrative Research

Hani Khoury.
Giving Up is Not An Option: Memoirs of a Palestine American.

Neill Korobov
Methodological prescriptions for analyzing narratives in interaction

Sabrina Liccardo.
Proposing a visual narrative method for exploring personal and social transformation.

Majse Lind
The indispensable turn to narrative identity in understanding and treating personality disorder

Elaine Lux-Koman
Narrative Versatility in Annie Rogers’s A Shining Affliction

Esther Maeers
From ‘married to my house’ to employed and empowered: A transformational story of parent engagement

Dan McAdams
Keynote: American Redemption: Variations on a Good Life Story

Esther Meears
What stories do the object-child-backpack assemblage tell us?

Keith Menhinick
Queer Trauma and Resilience

Hanna Meretoja
Keynote: Transformative Storytelling and Narrative Agency: Narrating Uncertainty in Tumultuous Times

Natalie Merrill
Self-event Connections in Intergenerational Narratives and Relations to Identity Development

Roland Messmer
Embodied Knowledge and Narratives in Teaching Physical Education

Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar.
Hacking the (Meta) Narrative: Genre and Ethics in the Introduction of the Metaverse.

Toni Monroe and Caroline Fernandes
The Process of Healing and Personal Growth through Narrative Digital Storytelling

Arnab Mukherjee and Sushmita Sarkar
Entrapped or Enabled? The role of narratives in empowering individuals and preserving livelihoods through skilling: Field Experiences & Analyses from India

Justin Ness
The Ethics of Storytelling: A Case Study

Kizito Okeke
Phenomenological Perspective on Authenticity and the Relevance of the Meaningful Structure and Dimensions in Therapeutic Processes

Tara Overzat.
Far from home: A narrative discussion on Asian international college students.

John Mark Parker and Mindie Blackshear.
Journey to Self: The Story of Discovery for Three Trans People.

Thomas Pierce.
A Comparison of the Reminiscence Bump Effect in Autobiographies and Biographies.

Bianca Poindexter and Dazzmen Davis
How does disclosure and nondisclosure work in a counseling setting regarding coming out stories of young adults of color?

William Randall.
Featured: Age as Adventure: Restorying Later Life.

Cathy Raymond and Nargis Ehsan
Decolonizing the Presentation of Research Findings: Amplifying One Afghan Woman’s Epistemic Authority and Literacy Practices Through Poetic Re-Storying

Don Redmond
Present as Prologue: Viewing Personal and Cultural Events in the Context of Story Chapters

Susan Riva
Autoethnography and Spiritual Journey – Homing In to Narrative Transformation

Brian Schiff.
Storying Justice

Tara Sievers-Hunt.
Called to the Conversation: From Interview to Ethnodrama.

Karen Skerrett.
W2W: The Witness to Witness Project: A force to harness hope.
Featured: Keynote: The Power of We Stories: To Transform, Heal and Inspire

Don Smith
Using Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Scores in Transforming Narratives

Jacob Stein
To Tell or not to Tell is not the only Question: Israeli Former POW’s Considerations, Dilemmas, and Narrative Adaptations on the Path to Narrating their Past Traumatic Events

Mario Steinberg
Understanding digital transformation in education through narratives

Deena Stewart-Hitzke
Bridging Intercultural and Intergenerational Divides Through Mutual Storytelling

Megan Sweet
Use of Storytelling to Advance Education Reform

Oddgeir Synnes
Poetry, narrative citizenship and dementia

Galen Tinder
Oral Narration and the Construction of Identity

Heidi Toivonen.
What environmental narratives can and cannot do for our sense of agency: Exploring the limits of narrative

Lisa Joy Tuttle.
The Transformative Potentials of Navigating Stigma for an Adult Diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder—A Pilot Narrative Study.

Gerben Westerhof.
Propranolol, unbearable memories, and dilemmas of narrative development.
Keynote: How to make narrative interventions work
“A Powerful Story”: Design and feasibility of a narrative intervention to promote recovery in persons with personality disorder

Jason Whitehead
Dangerous Stories: Narrative Theory and Critique in a Post-Truth World

Isabel Wilkerson
Keynote: The Warmth of Other Sons

Marlon Williams.
Truth in Storytelling: Ownership, Authorship, and Authenticity.

Danielle Wingfield-Smith
Oral History as a Tool for Justice: Examining the Intersections of Race, Education and Law in the Civil Rights Movement

PRESENTATIONS