Discourse and Narrative Methods

Mona Livholts (BA, MA, PhD) is Associate Professor of Social Work at the Department of Social and Welfare Studies at Linköping University, Sweden, and coordinator of R.A.W., The Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies. The main focus of her work is emergent writing methodologies, discourse and narrative methods and artistic research processes. Research themes include media and social work, gender and intersectionality, space, memory and technological transformation. She has published monographs, co-edited and edited volumes in Swedish and English, including, ‘Women’, Welfare, Textual Politics and Critique. An Invitation to a ThinkingWriting Methodology in the Study of Welfare, Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies, and a trilogy of untimely academic novellas: ‘The Professor’s Chair’, ‘The Snow Angel and Other Imprints’, and ‘Writing Water’.  Maria Tamboukou (BA, MA, PhD) is a professor of feminist studies at the University of East London, UK. Her research activity develops in the areas of philosophies and epistemologies in the social sciences, feminist theories, narrative analytics, and archival research. Writing feminist genealogies is the central focus of her work. She is the author of seven monographs and more than 70 journal articles and book chapters. Recent publications include the monographs Sewing, Writing and Fighting; Gendering the Memory of Work; Women Workers’ Education as well as the coauthored the book The Archive Project.

• PART I: Introducing Discourse and Narrative MethodsChapter 1. The Becoming of a Textbook. A Readers GuideChapter 2. Theoretical and Methodological Departures in Contested Fields of StudyChapter 3. Themes: Media and Society, Gender and Space, Autobiography and Life WritingPART II: Narrative and Discourse: Making ConnectionsChapter 4. Narrative Phenomena: Entanglements and Intra-Actions in Narrative ResearchChapter 5. Discourse, Authoring and PerformativityChapter 6. Narrative Modalities of PowerChapter 7. Discourse, Power and RepresentationChapter 8. Narrative as forceChapter 9. Discourses as Embodied GenealogiesChapter 10. Narrative and the PoliticalPART III: Situated and Reflective Writing SessionsChapter 11. A Politics of Location in Discourse and Narrative MethodsChapter 12. Working with Diaries and LettersChapter 13. Working with MemoriesChapter 14. Untimely Academic Novella Writing

Discourse and Narrative Methods interrogates the debates on narrative and discourse from a fresh and powerful perspective. By revitalizing the post-structuralist feminist theory, Livholts and Tamboukou generate veritable canons of their own, foregrounding such authors as Hannah Arendt, Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler. The idea of narrative as force, in particular, is intriguing and deserves further discussion.  Diary, letters, autobiography and memory work are only few examples of the areas where the methods are tested.  This is indeed an inspiring exercise in theory, analysis and personal writing.