This one-day course will be offered via Zoom only. Course schedule is 9:00am – 3:00pm, with a 1 hour lunch and (2) 10 minute breaks (1 in morning and 1 in afternoon). Attendance is required as it will not be recorded.

This course features Dynamic Narrative Inquiry – theory and principles for narrative research design and analysis drawing on the richness of expressive language. With this approach to qualitative inquiry, researchers can build on communication in daily life where diverse practices for sharing experience, making sense of experience, and imagining social change occur in personal narratives, sociocultural communications, and institutional policies.

This course involves a sequence of presentations and practical workshops with narrative analysis strategies applicable to small or large studies that sample verbal and/or visual discourse. We begin with an introduction to dynamic narrative inquiry, followed by modules with three analysis strategies that yield findings to a wide range of relevant social science research questions. With examples from prior published studies, I present rationales and methodology, including character mapping (to identify meaning in narrative actors, actions, and relationships); plot analysis (to identify how narrative structures express logics and intentions); and values analysis (to identify speaker/author/ purposes). The final hour of the day is devoted to discussing course participants’ insights from the workshops and implications for future research, practice, and policy.

Participants are welcome (but not required) to bring examples of qualitative data from your research: narratives, transcripts of interviews, social media posts, institutional documents (such as organizations’ mission statements), etc. For those who do not have data, I will provide some examples for practice. I will also send enrollees a few recommended readings. Please email me with questions or comments about the course: cdaiute@gc.cuny.edu.
To learn more about my research: http://www.colettedaiute.org.