Humans have communicated through stories since the beginning of time. Shared stories, or what we will call collective narratives, help us understand the world around us, but they also shape that world. In exploring the idea of collective narratives, we will examine several key questions: Why do we tell stories, and how do they matter? How do shared stories or collective narratives express social values and reinforce cultural norms? Whose stories are being told? How are they told? Whose stories are being ignored? Why are they ignored? We will investigate some of the ways in which collective—often competing—cultural narratives are formed, reproduced or contested, and circulated. Why have certain stories been accepted as “history” and how have they been contested and challenged to encompass new voices and new meanings? How does art contribute to collective narratives? How can it be used to confront dominant narratives and amplify marginalized voices? Finally, how can we engage with collective narratives through rewriting, revising and re-creating existing stories to provide needed counter-narratives that better reflect our own lives and values?

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