Narrative history is the practice of writing history in a story-based form. It tends to entail writing based on reconstructing a series of short-term events about individuals or specific events in a broader context. Learn about how to write a narrative history about your relatives and the process in writing your family history book using … Read more
A narrative is a story or an account. While there is no mainstream research design in family history, narrative inquiry is a research method that uses narratives as units of analysis to contextualize and interpret to create meaning. Learn about how to incorporate narrative inquiry to research and write your family history book. Examples from … Read more
Since even before America became an independent country, novelists have used their storytelling skills to help us understand our system of governance and our relationships with one another—sometimes with humor, sometimes with irony. Political novels have advocated causes or ideas, have recorded successes and issued warnings. They have revealed our flaws and trumpeted our strengths. … Read more
More than just knowing you could have said it better, reading like a writer means understanding what the writer meant to do in a given passage. There are specific choices writers make in character, scene, and plot. This workshop is for avid readers who want to adopt a fresh approach, book club members looking for … Read more
This presentation focuses on Oral History and its value to a community. Dr. Williams will share stories from two projects which he directed: the Appalachian Oral History Project and the Great Smoky Mountains Project. In the late 1970s Dr. Williams was one of the campus directors for an oral history project which covered four states … Read more
Learning to re-vise or “see again” is the most important skill in creative writing. This workshop addresses the challenges of revision from the shortest flash fiction to a complete novel. This session provides basic principles of revision and practical tools for approaching the work. Attendees will learn how to evaluate their pacing, language, and characters … Read more
This storytelling workshop presents the vocabulary for writers crafting short stories and novels. Who is the story about? What do they want? In exploration of genre expectations, seven basic plots, and the expected paths characters will follow, this workshop helps novice (and experience) writers name the structural elements of stories. The scaffolding of craft is … Read more
Immigration has been a controversial topic for many years, some would say forever, here and abroad. Having studied the Greek immigrants in his own family for his memoir, Because Memory Isn’t Eternal, and having talked to readers about their families, Deno Trakas will share his fascination with and understanding of the triumphs and travails of immigration … Read more
Having studied at USC with Matthew Bruccoli, the preeminent F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar in the world, Deno Trakas began his teaching career by designing a course on Fitzgerald, which became the most popular class he taught at Wofford. He was ever amazed by how the novel resonated with young adults a hundred years after its … Read more
