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Storytelling
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What is Storytelling?

Storytelling is the study of how narratives are constructed, transmitted, and received across cultures, media, and time periods. It appears in communications courses as well as literature, education, psychology, and cultural studies, making it one of the most cross-disciplinary subjects students encounter. What makes storytelling academically rich is its connection to power, identity, and meaning-making — questions about whose stories get told, how language shapes understanding, and how narratives function within and across cultures. Works like Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction, Augustine's Confessions, Cervantes, and Homer's Odyssey all serve as primary texts through which these questions are examined.

The papers written on this topic take a wide range of approaches. Literary analysis is common, with students examining an author's techniques to uncover themes — including redemption, as in The Kite Runner, or mockery and reader enjoyment in Cervantes. Comparative work sets authors or texts side by side to highlight differences in style, voice, or cultural context. Some essays take a cultural or anthropological angle, exploring how storytelling functions across societies and communities. Others move into applied or case-study territory, looking at storytelling in educational settings, child development, or the psychological dimensions of lived experience.

A strong essay on storytelling needs a focused thesis that goes beyond observing that narrative is important — it should argue something specific about how a storytelling technique, tradition, or choice produces a particular effect or meaning. Evidence drawn from close reading, cultural examples, or documented research carries the most weight. A common pitfall is treating storytelling too broadly, so anchoring the argument in a specific text, community, or context will keep analysis sharp and persuasive.

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Paper Undergraduate
How narrative and documentary films shape political representation through storytelling
In what ways do the demands of "good story" telling affect the way political issues and events are represented in film (both narrative and documentary)?
Essay Doctorate
Responsible conduct and appreciative inquiry in organizational change
Appreciative inquiry is a process of evoking organizational change focused on future success through attention on successes of the past. By recounting past triumphs, individuals generate positive energy that is shared among the group. Ethical and responsible conduct within organizations has several components, which are enhanced and exemplified through the cooperative practice of appreciative inquiry.
Essay Doctorate
How first impressions can deceive: learning from my landlord Terry
Human beings tend to focus on first impressions as a means of judging someone by using that first impression in order to compare what they expect from someone based on their appearance or initial interaction with what…
Research Paper Doctorate
Bowlby's attachment theory and the grieving process
Although often very painful, grief is a normal and natural response to loss (What pp). Generally, when most people think of loss and grief, they think of the death of a loved one, however, there are many other…
Research Paper Doctorate
Developing homework centers in public libraries for youth support
Developing Homework Centers in Public Libraries
Paper Masters
Caldecott Medal-winning picture books and their themes
George, Judith and David Small (ill.) So You Want to be President? New York: Philomel, 2000.
Essay Doctorate
Fiction as mirror and dystopia: Baldwin's and Vonnegut's contrasting narratives
Part one of the project is a comparison of the differences between a character from "Sonny's Blues," and one from "Harrison Bergeron." However, the actions embarked upon by these two characters, despite having good intentions, result in very different outcomes. Part two is an exercise in character development and consists of a two paragraph episode in which a fictional character is developed.
Paper Doctorate
Women's roles and influence in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
Abstract Wile Sula is the most moving of Morrison's works for me, I have found myself coming back over and over to Song of Solomon: first, for the fierce wisdom of Pilate, which I wrote on in Listening to Our Bodies; then for the wisdom and clarity and originality of Morrison's analysis of masculine archetypes and how they underlie men's individuation; and finally, for lessons about women's life stages, since the novel gives a cross section of women on the boundary line of passages into various new life stages (Smith, 1995). Like her other novels, Morrison's Song of Solomon crosses several generations; the major action of the novel takes place when all the women have grown middle-aged or old. Although this novel develops in depth Morrison's vision of masculine archetypes, the portraits of the women are as strong and compelling as her more centrally feminine previous novels; as Gloria Snodgrass Malone says, "men [are] more prominent in this novel, but women bear the brunt of suffering." The female figures are for me more memorable than the males. And although the novel's protagonist is male, he is finally redeemed by the strength and spirituality of several women in his family and the witch figure Circe, whom he meets on his journey South. Milkman is thirty-one when this happens (Cowart, 1990). The older women in his family are his mother, Ruth, sixty-two, and his aunt, Pilate, sixty-eight; these women comprise the portraits of women in the last stage of life, well past middle age. His sisters, Corinthians and Lena, are forty-two and forty-three respectively, thus moving into middle-age during the last section of the novel, as does Reba, Pilate's daughter, although her age is never actually given. Hagar, Milkman's cousin and lover, dies at thirty-six, apparently unable and unwilling to move towards middle-age. But before examining the women's life stages in depth, we need to set the stage with Morrison's development of masculine archetypes (Novak).
Research Paper Doctorate
Self-verification theory and interpersonal perception biases
Before examining four scholarly articles that address this issue and assessing the ways in which each of the writers performed her or his research, it seems useful to provide a general definition of the concept of self-verification. To omit this step would make it far more difficult to evaluate the following articles. Self-verification is a model or theoretical perspective that is based on the idea that each one of us wants to be understood by other people, and especially by those other people who are most important to us such as family members. We also tend to be especially sensitive to the opinions of those who have power over us such as work supervisors. This accords with common sense, for in all psychological dynamics we are likely to privilege those whom we love and those we fear.
Paper Undergraduate
Filmmaking techniques and the American Dream in Citizen Kane and The Roaring Twenties
¶ … films "Citizen Kane" directed by Orson Welles, vs. "Roaring Twenties," directed by Raoul Walsh and then compare, and contrast the basic film making techniques and themes that Orson Welles and Raoul Walsh utilized in…