Narrative and Multimodality Symposium

The Narrative and Multimodality Symposium has now taken place. It was a very full event, with a range of papers that spanned concerns with modes, media and narrative in both hi-tech and low-tech forms. The plenary speakers were David Herman, Michael Toolan, and Sue Thomas, all of whom delivered top class papers which got us talking about all sorts of things from the Hulk through to hypertext.

You can check out Jess's blog about more of the presentations. There were too many highlights for me to put them all here, but it was a memorable occasion that has provoked many issues to be explored further. For example, what is the common ground between researchers who are working in 'hi-tech' narrative/multimodal areas (represented by papers given by Helena Barbas, Sarah Hatton & Melissa McGurgan, Hans Rustad, Sonia Fizek, Jess Laccetti, Astrid Ensslin) and more traditional fields of stylistics and narrative analysis (represented by Alison Gibbons, Rocio Monotoro, Ulf Cronquist, Jeremy Scott, Fiona Doloughan and others). Are they next-door neighbours? What's the relationship between theory and practice in these fields? How does or can one area inform the other, and is that a one-way transfer?

The workshop on using new media narratives in teaching was my contribution to bringing these issues into focus. The wiki as it now stands will give you a feeling of some of the things that got discussed, and the bio page is a neat way of seeing in more detail some of the conference delegates. The wiki will continue to run for a while yet, both to update on the workshop strands themselves and to collate more information on pedagogic projects. I'm going to write up the whole experience of using the wiki, it's narrative and multimodal, pedagogic aspects and so on as a chapter for the edited collection that will come together from the symposium.

In the meantime, if you want to capture a flavour of the event in pictures, check out Jess's flickr page for the symposium.

Workshop preparation

I'm starting to prepare for a workshop I am running as part of the Narrative Symposium at UCE later this Spring. I spent some time yesterday with Sue Thomas and Bruce Mason over at DMU talking through possibilities, and picking their brains for formats, approaches and sample texts. The aims of the workshop are:

• to increase awareness of the diverse range of narrative forms being exploited in new media
• to think about how these challenge ideas of what narrative is and can do
• to develop ideas for using this in pedagogic contexts.

The workshop will have a pre-symposium element, where delegates can collaborate beforehand on these topics, then have the face-to-face meeting, then have a post-symposium 'write-up'. I am now venturing into the world of wiki as a platform for the pre and post symposium collaborations. Part of me is really excited about what possibilities this holds for shaping new developments between colleauges, changing the way we in the humanities often teach paper/text oriented subjects, and breaking down academic barriers of all kinds. Another part of me is scared that it is not going to work!

The challenges are many: not least, seeing the extent to which the delegates will be willing to be transliterate, to explore territory which is perhaps not their own, to find time to do something 'extra' as well as the research, teaching, administration and administration and oh, did I forget to mention it, administration? Maybe I am being a little pessimistic here. Maybe everyone will come on board swimmingly. I am determined to have great fun and learn a lot in the process anyway.