Director’s Welcome
Since dreaming up Organizing Stories this summer, we’ve been excited to build a space where students, faculty, community members and activists can gather together and think about the role of storytelling in their work. The seeds of this project took root in the midst of global pandemic and the global uprisings against anti-blackness. The idea that stories and storytelling play a meaningful role in political work have always inspired our work, both on campus and beyond.
Whether considering how someone like Sojourner Truth crafted a biography that doubled as a political manifesto or thinking about how the countless men and women who marched in the New York Silent Protest Parade marshalled performance strategies to challenge racial terror, stories have been a powerful political tool. So, too, has storytelling worked expansively through visual culture as a tool for social change, as in documentary texts like How the Other Half Lives, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and The Sweet Flypaper of Life, but also through what become iconic photographic images which go on to shape the cultural memory of social movements from the past in our contemporary moment. At the same time, there’s a way of thinking about the narratives that uphold systems of power, as through legal fictions that have historically justified forms and versions of inequity.
In just a few short months, we’ve worked tirelessly to expand our team to include a graduate research assistant and three amazing undergraduate research assistants; they are Michael Harrington, Gabriella Carter, Sarah Elkordy, and Emma Harlan. They’ve added so much to the project, and have expanded our own ideas about what we might be able to do with Organizing Stories. We couldn’t be happier to have them on board. We also successfully launched our first storytelling workshop with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharris, where she talked about the important work the Poor People’s Campaign has been doing at both the local and national levels to change our predominant narratives around poverty. After this first workshop, we are slated for an exciting lineup this semester and next!
As we move forward, we are dedicated to continue pushing the boundaries of what constitutes narrative, but also the work that we think of as activism, and to bringing organizers to campus to share tools and practices with our students. We are energized by the idea that Organizing Stories can become a vibrant hub on campus, not just for exploring the interconnections between storytelling and activism, but also towards rethinking the modes of humanistic inquiry more broadly as they cross paths with the work that visionaries are doing across the country in dreaming new worlds, too. To do this, we’ll foster meaningful dialogue with departments, students, community institutions and the many forms of activism that are thriving today. As we continue to dream and grow Organizing Stories, we welcome everyone to attend our workshops and engage with the multi-media content that our wonderful and brilliant undergraduates will be creating along the way.
In solidarity,
Autumn and Monica