Abstract: Given the intertwining of story and science, this article argues that science communication is always already an act of storytelling making it suitable for narrative analysis. However, among the extensive vocabulary from narrative theories across a variety of disciplines and practices, it can be overwhelming to synthesize this information into a manageable heuristic to apply to specific stories. To rectify this gap in intention and application, this article evaluates the utility of a tool called “narrative webs” that translates narrative theory and concepts to easily accessible choices that science communicators can use to tell scientific stories.
Abstract: The themes presented in children’s television episodes frequently embody values that are often mirrored or shaped by how these episodes conclude, especially through the incorporation of happy endings. This research centers on the Spanish preschool series Momonster , aired on Clan TV and designed for all audiences. Adopting a textual analysis framework, this study classifies ending types and values, scrutinizing them within the context of the narrative structure with the aim of elucidating the narrative traits that characterize children’s series on public television.
Abstract: The late 2010s saw the revitalization of the Twilight fandom, known as the “Twilight Renaissance,” during which it revisited the heteronormative vampires of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga with a sapphic and de-sanitized lens. The Twilight Renaissance, especially on Tumblr, is one example of how fandom retellings facilitate queer reclamation and representation. These points are supported by scholarship on literary vampires and queer theory as well as by examples from the Twilight Renaissance. This article aims to expand the conversation on how queer communities create their own narratives in response to the lack of desired representation in mainstream culture.
Abstract: The emergence of the British Empire in India saw the rise and fall of nabobs, merchants-turned-officers who returned to Britain with unexplained wealth and threatened to disrupt social order. This article explores the nabob as it was imagined in fiction and performed on stage. The nabob as a character provides a lens through which to explore the emergence of the empire. The essay also suggests that these imaginaries spilled over into other contexts, including the trial of Warren Hastings. The failure of the trial, it is suggested, marked the end of the nabob’s career as a villain on and off stage.
Abstract: Violence has played a significant role in historical narrative traditions, often reflecting broader societal norms and moral lessons. Violent deaths in Estonian folktales are examined across three subgenres: fairy tales, animal tales, and realistic tales. The analysis combines traditional folkloristic methods with AI-based corpus analysis. The study is based on a corpus of published archival texts, focusing on character roles, narrative structures, and thematic variations in the portrayal of violence. Proppian narrative functions are used to classify instances of violent death, assessing their prevalence and patterns.
Abstract: This essay examines how Asian Americans have confronted anti-Asian racism during and after COVID-19. Using autoethnographic methods and analysis of online discourse, it argues that the pandemic experiences enabled many Asian individuals to redefine their sense of being Asian from an individual racial category to a political identity. The heightened anti-Asian sentiment reinforced stereotypes of Asians as "perpetual foreigners" and "multicultural others." Ironically, this atmosphere fostered stronger coalitions within pan-Asian communities. The study highlights the creation of counter-narratives within Asian communities that advocate for racial justice and how shared experiences of discrimination on online platforms foster unity within marginalized communities.
Abstract: This research investigates a particular metaphor used in the pandemic narrative in China, the character yáng 羊 (sheep or goat), phonetically similar to yáng 阳 (positive), evolving into a narrative tool for those who tested positive for the virus. Drawing from Sontag's framework of illness metaphors, it examines the "sheep" metaphor collected from social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Twitter (X), and WeChat via discourse analysis. The research explores the narrative dynamics from an initial descriptor to a more complex narrative symbol to shed light on how the Chinese have coped with the pandemic.
Abstract: Pandemic-prevention-themed literature emerged as a sort of "hasty work" (急就章) in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this context, folk art and literature represent a form of soft mobilization within rural communities, which can be regarded as a narrative strategy through the assimilation and internalization of rigid policies. Conversely, those expressions denoting "hasty work" have lost their original critical and ironic connotations. This loss of their intrinsic character (失格) serves to obscure reality and potentially trivialize the gravity of the public health crisis, which requires careful reflection and nuanced understanding.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic, superimposed upon the preceding pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong, has created a complex environment for grappling with questions surrounding the implementation and implications of the "one country, two systems" principle. Drawing upon twenty-seven in-depth interviews, this paper presents the blurred, contradictory, and intricate political narratives of Hong Kong citizens as they pertain to issues of self-identity, governance rights, and central-local relations. This research calls for a multidimensional understanding of the complexity and ambiguity inherent in the evolving social dynamics to rethink the paradoxical relationship between cooperation and confrontation among Hongkongers and their counterparts in mainland China.
Abstract: Based on virtual ethnography, interviews, and personal experience narratives collected in 2020–2023, this study examines the stories and resiliencies of Chinese immigrant mothers in the US during the "twin pandemics" of COVID-19 and racisms. By examining critical perspectives on the concepts of resiliencies in diverse fields, including folklore studies, ecology, psychology, ethnomusicology, and public health, and integrating individual, cultural, and political resilience frameworks, this study considers how personal narratives can offer insights into our understanding of how diverse forms of resiliencies have been cultivated and played roles in constituting Chinese immigrant mothers' racial, ethnic, and gendered subjectivities and agencies.
Abstract: This special issue examines diverse stories, struggles, resiliencies, and actions of individuals and communities in China and the US as they navigated the "twin pandemics" of COVID-19 and racisms. Responding to the absence of voices from scholars in China in many English-language publications about COVID-19, this issue brings together a rich tapestry of COVID-19 narratives that includes the perspectives of Chinese scholars and scholars in the pan-Asian community. Exploring diverse narratives of COVID-19 in China and the US, the authors engage in processes of knowledge production and social advocacy, recognizing the significance of narratives as research subjects, methodology, practices, and strategies.
Abstract: This article examines both vernacular and establishment narratives about animals and nature in Tibet and the Himalayas. Close readings of documents from the Tibetan Imperial Period and major works of Tibetan literature will be juxtaposed with community narratives collected during fieldwork in the Spiti region of India’s Northwest Himalayas. This article suggests that the historical tendency to emphasize the subjugation of nature has been challenged by recent vernacular and establishment accounts. We shall see that narratives in Spiti have stressed that the relationship between humans and the natural world is a reciprocal one, rather than one of subjugation.
Abstract: This article analyzes the reworking of a variant of the myth of Rome, the Myth of an American Rome, by the principal reclassification movement actor, Luigi Rocco Antonini, during the Second World War. It explores the discursive origins, establishes historical context, and examines the construction and synthesis of plotlines. The significance as a political myth to mobilize the people of Italian descent in support of a singular loyalty to America and to reconcile the dilemma of fighting against Italy is evaluated. Although intended to function as a liberating force, the analysis reveals the potential was undermined by various constraints.
Abstract: Almost simultaneously with the end of communism, the emergence of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) has become a hallmark event of the post-communist upheavals for many Chinese citizens. Although most UFO enthusiasts have only scant knowlContents edge of UFOs, in narratives they describe UFOs as a sign of radical hope. Drawing on public narratives and ethnographic fieldwork, the article discusses how and why the extraterrestrial imagination strikes resonance among China’s post-communist generations. Engaged with the concept of narrative hope, the article further examines how narrative practices produce hope through contesting linear temporality thereby playing with unfulfilled promises and alternative futures.
Abstract: Introducing diversity into the white-dominated media business is part of mainstreaming social justice movements. This article addresses Indigenous themes’ and talents’ inclusion in two television series by mainstream production companies from the perspectives of organic representation, inclusivity, and justice. The analysis focuses on Canadian legal drama Burden of Truth (2018–2021) and French-Swedish Nordic Noir Midnattssol ( Midnight Sun , 2016). It considers the participation of Indigenous talents and their realistic address of social concerns and argues that both series work within the constraints of their political economies while offering modes for representation that demonstrate possibilities for creating inclusive and socially impactful, yet entertaining, productions.
Abstract: This article explores how the motif of an ordinary man who confronts a powerful antagonist endangering the community has been used to help achieve national political goals. In 1858, Slovenian writer Fran Levstik wrote the tale of Martin Krpan, a mighty hero who saves the Empire. The character was inspired by the folktale hero Peter Klepec, as well as the medieval knight Gašper Lambergar who saved the Holy Roman Emperor. In the twentieth century, writers retold the tale of Peter Klepec at significant historical moments—on the eve of the breakup of the Habsburg Empire and before and after World War II.
Abstract: This essay examines narratives produced with entities in Cuban Palo traditions for the purpose of invoking copresences through the assemblage of images, words, and bodies. The dead, nkisi, tell multilayered, coded stories of strife and affliction in ways that weaponize practitioners and objects. We bring together primary sources from the Lydia Cabrera Papers, alongside ethnographic encounters in Cuba with Congo-inspired material, culture, and spiritual elders to trace the afterlives of narrating assemblages. Following Édouard Glissant, we further argue for an understanding of Palo narratives as sites of revelation and opacity whose fugitivity pushes against colonial practices of knowability and appropriation.
Abstract: During the first Danish lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, the usual order of everyday time became destabilized. Everyday rhythms and the quotidian "here-and-now" were transformed, and the near past surfaced as a utopian future many wished to return to, while people tried to re-order everyday time in narratives and sequences by means of new routines and materialities, and within ambiguous and affective moods. Using empirical material of over sixty-five student diaries and essays written during the Danish pandemic situation, the objective is to analytically open the complexity of temporal practices as they are performed in everyday life.
