Telling it Live! Interactive and Global Storytelling

Storytelling in Higher Education Pre-Conference

Pittsburgh, PA

July 20, 2006

8:30 am - 4:30 pm

In line with the 2006 National Storytelling Conference theme, academe needs to take a serious look at where we fit in the storytelling community.  In years past, the storytelling community was made up of librarians, teachers, traditional tellers and a budding troop of professional storytellers who told primarily in the public schools.  Today, as interest in storytelling proliferates in the applied settings of the health professions, corporations, ministry, law and social action, as well as making inroads in performance related venues, the time has come to explore what constitutes a discipline in storytelling.  Universities are being called upon to offer storytelling classes that cover a broad scope and still train students to be working performance artists.  Technology is also affecting how we communicate and share our stories.   With this in mind, the pre-conference will address the questions posed by the national conference planners:  What is the storytelling community? Who’s part of it?  And what are the limits?

We will begin the morning with a keynote speech by Mr. Eric Miller entitled, "Storytelling and Videoconferencing."  This discussion-oriented presentation will explore numerous ways that videoconferencing can be of use to the storytelling community.  Videoconferencing allows each participant in a communication event to send and receive video as well as audio, and is increasingly becoming a feature of home and office communication systems.  The types of storytelling events that can occur via videoconferencing include multi-location performances and interactive workshops, involving genres ranging from everyday conversational storytelling to various more formal types of storytelling. 

The use of this technology can also be a key component in efforts to nurture and develop rare and ancient cultures that otherwise might vanish with little trace.  Differences and similarities between storytelling among those who are
physically-present to each other, and storytelling among those who are tele-present to each other, will be discussed.  The ability to have video-mediated face-to-face communication from around the world, with (near) instantaneous feedback shared among all who are tele-present, can broaden and enrich the global storytelling community.

Eric Miller is a Ph.D. candidate in Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).  His hometown is NYC.  He has moved to Chennai, the capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.  Eric's dissertation is entitled, "South Indian Children's Songs-chants-dances-games, Language learning, and Videoconferencing."  The primary research for this project involved a year-and-a-half of ethnographic fieldwork with Kani (tribal) people in a mountainous forest-jungle area in the interior of Tamil Nadu.  Upon completion of his degree, Eric plans to help develop an international storytelling institute and a center for videoconference teaching and learning, performance, and discussion.