COMP 362
Story, Self, and Society
Last Offered Fall 2017
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed SOC 362
This course is not offered in the current catalog

From The Moth to StoryCorps to Williams College’s own Storytime, stories are ubiquitous in contemporary society. Indeed, sociologists have argued that social life is itself “storied”-that we locate ourselves within familiar narrative structures, using them to “construct” identities and “tell” our lives. Stories, in this view, are not only the stuff of literature, but also the very fabric of social life: the foundation for individual and collective identities. This tutorial will grapple with the role of stories and storytelling in modern social life. What role do stories play in constituting personal identity? What cultural templates structure the stories we tell? Why are memoirs so popular, and how can we explain the more recent resurgence of interest in oral forms of storytelling? Specific topics will include illness narratives, confessional culture, digital stories, oral history, and memoir. As a capstone exercise, each student will construct a narrative analysis focused on a memoir that we will select collectively. The course will conclude with a final seminar meeting during which each student will tell a story of their own, and we will work together to consider how the theories we have encountered throughout the semester might illuminate our own narratives.