The Multi-Narrative International Research Association organized a panel for the ISSN Conference in Chichester titled “Multi-Narrative Genres and Boundaries.” The panel focused a central question that emerged from the Multi-Narrative Conference at Kiel: should we be thinking about multi-narratives as specific texts, narrative techniques, formal types, interpretive strategies, or something else entirely. Corinne Bancroft drew on Peter J. Rabinowitz’s conceptualization of genre to argue that the recent history of braided narratives offers an important case study that illustrates the mutually constitutive relationship between author’s choices and readers’ expectations in the formation of a genre. Liz Bahs explored the emergence of Dance Dance Revolution’s dual narratives and argue that the features that define the book distinguish it as a poetic example of a “braided narrative” a category previously used only to define a multi-narrative sub-genre of the novel. Jutta Zimmermann focused on Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For that marks the boundaries between local narratives with gaps, asterisks or other paratextual markers, which initiate a process where readers need to make sense of the disruption. Zimmermann connected these formal boundaries to the work’s thematic preoccupation, namely that of representing identities constituted by the straddling of cultural borders in post-colonial contexts.

On September 1-3, 2021 Jutta Zimmermann, André Schwarck and Cord-Christian Casper hosted an international conference on the multi-narrative via Zoom. This first conference on the multi-narrative attracted scholars from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their presentations explored the ways multi-narrative theory can be useful in interpreting a wide variety of literature from modernist favorites like Welty’s The Golden Apples to Marvel reboots and recons. These presentations not only demonstrated the relevance of the concept of the multi-narrative but also honed in on important questions and new avenues of study. The conference organizers are currently collecting expanded versions of these papers into an edited volume. You can find the presentation abstracts here: https://www.multi-narratives.uni-kiel.de/de/abstracts.

At the 2020 International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference in New Orleans, the multi-narrative research group organized a panel titled “Multi-Narrative Round-Table: Juxtaposition and Coherence in Contemporary Narrative.”  The round-table format highlighted how our papers participate in an ongoing conversation in a different way than the paired panels had at previous conferences.   André Schwarck opened the panel with a paper that articulated the main points of our current working paper. Cord-Christian Casper, Corinne Bancroft and Evan Van Tassell followed with brief papers that each focused on one parameter of the current working paper in relation to a specific text.  Peter Rabinowitz, who had an opportunity to read all the papers in advance, concluded with a response that both engaged our project and outlined unanticipated applications of the multi-narrative.

The 2019 Conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative in Pamplona, included two panels on the multi-narrative.  The first panel  focused on the formal heterogeneity of “multi-narratives” and considered the specific effects that these strategies of juxtaposition can have.  The second panel built on the first by engaging the way particular “multi-narratives” invite homogenizing interpretive strategies even as other formal elements remain juxtaposed.

At the 2018 International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference in Montréal, researchers from Germany, the U.S., the U.K., and Canada, joined together for two panels on “multi-narratives.” The first sought to delineate the key structural elements of “multi-narratives,” and the second explored potential ethical and emotional affordances of “multi-narratives” in telling stories of trauma, identity and historical violence.