This intersectional collection considers how literature, film, and narrative, more broadly, take up the complexities of health, demonstrating the pivotal role of storytelling in health politics.

Narrative Politics explores two puzzles. The first has long preoccupied social scientists: How do individuals come together to act collectively in their common interest? The second is one that has long been ignored by social scientists: Why is it that those who promote collective action so often turn to stories? Why is it that when activists call for action, candidates solicit votes, organizers seek new members, generals rally their troops, or coaches motivate their players, there is so much story-telling? Frederick W. Mayer argues that answering these questions requires recognizing the power of story to overcome the main obstacles to collective action: to surmount the temptation to free ride, to coordinate group behavior, and to arrive at a common understanding of the collective interest. In this book, Mayer shows that humans are, if nothing else, a story-telling, story-consuming animal. We use stories to make sense of our experience and to imbue it with meaning-our self-narratives define our sense of identity and script our actions. Because we are constituted by narrative, we can be moved by the stories told to us by others. That is why leaders who call a community to action seek to frame their invocations in a story in which tragedy and triumph hang in the balance, in which taking part in the collective action becomes a moral imperative rather than a matter of calculated self-interest. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and behavioral economics, political science and sociology, history and cultural studies, literature and narrative theory, Narrative Politics sheds light on a wide range of political phenomena from social movements to electoral politics to offer lessons for how the power of story fosters collective action.

Narrative – State of the Art which was originally published as a Special Issue of Narrative Inquiry 16:1 (2006) is edited by Michael Bamberg and contains 24 chapters (with a brief introduction by the editor) that look back and take stock of developments in narrative theorizing and empirical work with narratives. The attempt has been made to bring together researchers from different disciplines, with very different concerns, and have them express their conceptions of the current state of the art from their perspectives. Looking back and taking stock, this volume further attempts to begin to deliver answers to the questions (i) What was it that made the original turn to narrative so successful? (ii) What has been accomplished over the last 40 years of narrative inquiry? (iii) What are the future directions for narrative inquiry? The contributions to this volume are deliberately kept short so that the readers can browse through them and get a feel about the diversity of current narrative theorizing and emerging new trends in narrative research. It is the ultimate aim of this edited volume to stir up discussions and dialogue among narrative researchers across these disciplines and to widen and open up the territory of narrative inquiry to new and innovative work.

A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth. How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras. This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

Contemporary Vulnerabilities offers critical reflections about vulnerable moments in research committed to social change. This interdisciplinary collection gathers reflexive narratives and analyses about innovative methodologies that engage with unconventional and unexpected research spaces inhabited and shared by scholars. The authors encourage us to collaborate within, reflect on, and confront the frictions of inquiry around social change. With an aim of contesting the dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies, the collection includes modes of storytelling and examples of knowledge gathering that are often excluded from academic texts in general and methodological texts in particular. All those interested in research methodologies and social justice inquiry will find provocation and recognition in this volume, including scholars, ethics boards, and students. Contributors: Aly Bailey, Kayla Besse, Meredith Bessey, Madeline Burghardt, Claire Carter, Shraddha Chatterjee, Yuriko Cowper-Smith, Eva Cupchik, Cheyanne Desnomie, Bongi Dube, Athanasia Francis, Rebecca Godderis, Moses Gordon, Emily Grafton, Caitlin Janzen, Evadne Kelly, Debra Langan, Rebecca Lennox, Corinne L. Mason, Tara-Leigh McHugh, Preeti Nayak, Anh Ngo, Jess Notwell, Marcia Oliver, Cassandra J. Opikokew Wajuntah, Merrick Pilling, Kendra-Ann Pitt, Salima Punjani, seeley quest, Carla Rice, Jen Rinaldi, Lori Ross, Kate Rossiter, Brenda Rossow-Kimball, Siobhán Saravanamuttu, Melissa Schnarr, Bettina Schneider, Irene Shankar, Skylar Sookpaiboon, Chelsea Temple Jones, Amelia Thorpe, Paul Tshuma, Amber-Lee Varadi, Jijian Voronka, Kristyn White.

How can individuals live well in the midst of inescapable trauma and illness? What symbolic and material resources foster resiliency among individuals facing vulnerable circumstances?

Illness narratives have become a cultural phenomenon in the Western world. In what ways can they be seen to have aesthetic, ethical and political value? What do they reveal about experiences of illness, the relationship between the body and identity and the role of the arts in bearing witness to illness for people who are ill and those connected to them? How can they influence medicine, the arts and shape public understandings of health and illness? These questions and more are explored in Illness as Many Narratives, which contains readings of a rich array of representations of illness from the 1980s to the present. A wide range of arts and media are considered such as life writing, photography, performance, film, theatre, artists' books and animation. The individual chapters deploy multidisciplinary critical frameworks and discuss physical and mental illness. Through reading this book you will gain an understanding of the complex contribution illness narratives make to contemporary culture and the emergent field of Critical Medical Humanities.