HON 238 - The Power of Storytelling: Narrative Theory and Practice

Prerequisite, acceptance to the University Honors Program or consent of instructor and Honors Director. A distinctly human endeavor, storytelling can serve many purposes: interpreting past and present, projecting a future, encouraging empathy, providing testimony, giving voice to individual realities, and more. Through the composition of personalized writing projects that are critical and creative and through the analysis of narrative use in various genres and texts of established authors, students explore the humanistic value and rhetorical effect of storytelling in their own work and the works of others. This writing seminar will focus on the structure and function of narrative and its conventions, the persuasive use of narrators and narration, and the implications of interpretation and adaptation across media. Letter grade. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits