(Re)generative Storytelling: Embodied Narratives for Resilience and Social Renewal

March 5-8, 2025| Pittsburgh PA), Virtual Only

Abstract submission link: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21583

ABSTRACTS DUE: SEPT 30, 2025 

In the spirit of (Re)generation, this session invites explorations into how storytelling and performance act as forces of cultural renewal, social resilience, and imaginative transformation. Performance-based storytelling, particularly from marginalized and historically silenced communities, allows us to envision futures rooted in justice, equity, and collective empowerment. Social renewal, at its core, is about healing, evolving, and reimagining society to better reflect our shared humanity and collective needs.

Rather than simply returning to old narratives, we seek proposals that cultivate creative new pathways: performance practices that reimagine identity, interrogate inherited histories, and reclaim voice through the body and voice. In this regenerative framework, storytelling becomes a tool not only of resistance but of restoration.

Drawing inspiration from autoethnographic and archival methods such as newspapers, journals, personal archives, reflective writing, and self-interviews, this session highlights artistic expression as a regenerative act. It becomes an evolving conversation with the self, the community, and the world. As noted in The SAGE Handbook of Performance Studies, the embodiment of personal narrative “is an act of reclaiming and expressing oneself through the body and voice… giving voice and body to certain identities” (Langellier, 1998, p. 207).

We welcome proposals that demonstrate how narrative-based performance can serve as a catalyst for social renewal, civic engagement, environmental awareness, cultural sustainability, and human rights. Presenters may perform or screen selections from their work and are encouraged to share creative processes that reflect a regenerative approach to storytelling and scholarship. 

Please note: this is a VIRTUAL only panel [no in-person or hybrid options]

Questions regarding the panel may be addressed to Brittney S. Harris, Virginia Tech (b1harris@vt.edu).