Fourth Annual Humber College School of Liberal Arts & Sciences Conference
October 4-5, 2013

 Telling Stories: Narratives of Knowledge; Narratives as Knowledge

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Shahrzad Mojab (OISE/University of Toronto)

Telling stories is a fundamental human need. As American scholar Jonathan Gottschall argues, we are “storytelling animals”: our narratives “make us human.” Stories both told and untold have influenced our understanding of individual and social realities. Considering what we store, transport and transform in these stories reveals much about what we seek from the world and our study of it. So too does considering both the silences that may figure in these stories and stories that challenge these silences.

This year’s Humber LAS Conference will investigate how narratives influence knowledge. We want to address two themes in particular:

• What are the narratives of knowledge? What stories do our professions and academic disciplines tell about themselves, and why? What questions might we raise about these stories?
• How do narratives serve as knowledge? How does the act of storytelling contribute to explorations of human experience? What can it reveal? What can it hide?

We invite proposals from all Ontario college faculty and staff members interested in pursuing links between such questions and their own investigations of anthropology, architecture, art, business, computing, criminology, cuisine, culture, design, education, film, gender, geography, history, identity, journalism, law, literature, mathematics, media, philosophy, politics, psychology, race, religion, science, sexuality, sociology, technology, or any other scholarly concern.

Possible themes for presentations include

• Dominant narratives and their effects on work in a discipline
• How story-telling or retelling histories creates pathways for social and political action
• Myths of a profession or discipline and their part in shaping that enterprise
• The value or limitations of narrative form as a means of presenting information (e.g. considerations of historical narratives or anthropologists’ case studies)
• How stories figure in the creation and definition of culture and identity
• How corporations, governments and other institutions form or reinforce dominant narratives that marginalize alternative views
• How marginalized individuals or groups push back against dominant narratives
• Different versions of the same story and what these differences reveal about the tellers
• Links between technology and message, or how the medium in which a story is told influences its meaning and reception
• Teleological thinking and other attempts to “finish off” a story

Please submit your presentation proposal (max. 200 words) as a .pdf or .docx attachment to the LAS Conference committee (lasconference@humber.ca) by SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013. Successful applicants will be contacted by the committee in early June.

 To download the submission form, please click here.