Aims & Scope
Storytelling, Self, Society is an interdisciplinary journal that invites scholarship addressing any topic related to storytelling-from its role as performing art to contemporary applications in a variety of professional fields. We welcome manuscripts from scholars in humanities and social science disciplines, including psychology, library science, literary studies, folklore, anthropology, sociology, communication, rhetoric, performance studies, theatre, history, feminist and queer studies, and ethnography, as well as from storytelling artists and practitioners, including those applying storytelling in the fields of education, health care, social work, business, law, peace-building, and environmental education. Our purpose is to gather the building blocks of new disciplinary roles, structures, and methodologies for storytelling in the 21st century.
We seek articles that reflect the highest standards of the various disciplines on which we draw, and to which we intend to contribute. In addition to standard monographs, Storytelling, Self, Society seeks to extend the critical vocabulary of contemporary storytelling, and so solicits reviews of storytelling performances and individual texts, as well as essays that review several performances and texts. We welcome personal ethnography and reflection, as well as stories that have evolved from the oral tradition and reflect upon the endurance and evolution of oral traditions in the present day.
We recognize the profound and often contested influences of storytelling and cultural narratives on the health of the individual, the community, and the planet. We seek ways to evaluate, measure, and focus those influences to impact our scholarship, our disciplines, our society, and ourselves. In keeping with an interdisciplinary journal, monographs and review essays in Storytelling, Self, Society are written in prose that is appropriate for a wide range of scholars and educated readers rather than the specialized jargon of a specific discipline.