Politics of Story Telling in Island Imperial Formations

Monday and Tuesday, June 10-11
All day
Communications 206

This international invitational workshop seeks to build a distinct theoretical language about the form and function of storytelling in the historical creation and recreation of modern island formations across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Drawing upon decades of work on storytelling in the non-European world, it seeks to interrogate Benjamin’s thought-provoking essay by looking at intersections of storytelling, psychoanalysis as a transnational discourse of those same interwar years, and the textual communities that storytelling produces in various parts of Asia, the Caribbean, and Asian America. How do forms of storytelling intersect with national dreams and desires in the age of empire? How do stories move across borders, become reconfigured, and serve the interests of power and capital?

Photo: Javanese outrigger canoe, courtesy of Judith Henchy, Southeast Asia Collection, UW Libraries.