Theme: Disparate Narrative Worlds: Crisis, Conflict & the Possibility of Hope
“One of the central functions of narrative is the ability to create and shape worlds. Certainly, narrative can provide the resources for producing shared worlds in order to develop commonly held meanings. But a shared world is not the only possible consequence. Narratives can also establish competing versions of the world, which sometimes divide persons and groups so deeply that they can appear to be occupying different realities.
Of course, persons and groups have always inhabited disparate worlds. However, the protracted violent wars raging across the globe, new modes of communication and technologies, multiplication of sources, and the rise of political extremism seem to have exacerbated the situation, fracturing groups and calcifying existing divisions. The result is that disparate narrative worlds with alternative facts and multiple truths form the contours of our everyday reality.” - from the AUP Narrative Matters 2025 website
Topics
Narrative responses to crisis and conflict, repair and reconciliation.
The narrative processes of establishing fact, truth, reality.
The rights, authority, and entitlement to narratives, experiences, or identities.
Disparate worlds of illness and care.
Disparate bodies, disparate narratives (e.g., disability, transableism, gender identity).
Literary, artistic, and cultural narratives and the conspiratorial imagination.
The narrative worlds of systematic discrimination and racism.