Stanford Storytelling Project

Courses are designed primarily for undergraduates and listed in departments and programs such as Education, English, History, Theater and Performance Studies, PWR, Oral Communication, LifeWorks, and American Studies. Register through Axess.  Many courses are offered in alternating years see also our Past Courses.

Fall 2023

Oral Documentary Workshop

Fall 2023 | Oral Communications 126 | 1 credit
Instructor: Laura Joyce Davis

This workshop will lead students through the process of turning interviews, archival tape, and other recorded material into an accomplished audio documentary suited for public radio and major podcasts. Students will learn how to build story out of their materials, design and create a script, edit and mix sound, and distribute their final product. Suited especially to students returning from summer documentary and oral history research projects. Instructor Permission Required.

Introduction to Podcast Storytelling

Fall 2023 | Oral Communications 127 | 2 credits
Fulfills WAYS-CE requirement
Instructor: Laura Joyce Davis

This introductory course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of creating stories for narrative podcasting. You will learn how to develop and produce pieces across a variety of genres, from memoir to reported pieces, and you will learn the entire process, step-by-step, from pitching and interviewing to scripting and audio editing. The course combines a traditional seminar format with a practicum where we workshop work in progress for nonfiction podcasts produced by the Storytelling Project. 

Winter 2024

Sound Stories

Winter 2024 | Oral Communications 127 | 4 credits
Fulfills WR 2 and WAYS-CE requirements
Instructor: Laura Joyce Davis

This seminar is designed for students interested in creating audio stories for radio, podcast, and other forms of sonic narrative. Students will examine the craft elements of the audio form, popularized by programs such as This American Life, Radiolab, and Serial including skills for interviewing, scoring, and audio editing, and will then produce their own documentary, memoir, or investigative story. This is a hybrid class, equal parts classic seminar and creative workshop. Students will work in small groups, learning how to develop material, choose an effective structure, blend dramatization and reflection, ground insights in concrete scenes, create a strong narrative arc, and manage elements such as characterization, description, and dialogue in order to create engaging stories with social impact. Recommended for students interested not only in podcasting but also creative nonfiction, documentary, film, and sound art. No prior experience with story craft or media required.

Spring 2024

Stories to Save Our Planet

Transforming Climate Solutions Research Into World-Changing Stories

Spring 2023 | Oral Communications 128 | 4 credits
Fulfills WR 2 and WAYS-CE requirements
Instructor: Laura Joyce Davis

The United Nations have called climate change the challenge of our generation. Fiorenza Micheli, Chair of Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, says that the problems of climate change are too complex and happening so fast that we “have to co-create solutions from the start to address issues in sustainability and climate.” Storytelling offers us the opportunity to witness and communicate the impact of climate change and bring clarity and understanding to its solutions. This course is designed to equip students with the skills, tools, and process to transform complicated climate solutions into compelling audio stories that show us how to protect and preserve the ecosystems that sustain life. This is a hybrid class, equal parts classic seminar and creative workshop. We’ll study the work of climate storytellers and activists, examine the architecture of great stories in the audio form, and develop podcast production skills for interviewing, scriptwriting, storyboarding, voiceover narration, audio editing, and sound design. Students will work with partners to produce a narrative podcast episode about a specific climate change solution, and the knowledge, tools, and experience to become more persuasive environmental storytellers and advocates. Interested students should submit this form: https://forms.gle/Taa9TxYKk4fRDMhr7

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Fall 2021

MEETING THE MOMENT: INNER RESOURCES FOR HARD TIMES

  SOUND & MUSIC: THE RHETORIC OF MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

PWR 2
Instructor: Tiffany Naiman
Fall 2021, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-11:15 & 11:30-1:15
4 Units

Film and music have been linked since the invention of moving pictures accompanied by organ music in theaters. But what does it mean when the film is all about the music, its creators, or musical events, or cultures? This course introduces you to the rhetoric, history, and aesthetics of music documentaries by helping you to cultivate the research-based writing and speaking skills to investigate how music documentaries develop their claims about a musical artist’s creativity or place in musical history (i.e., Beyoncé: Homecoming). The influence of music documentaries is immense, as they reinforce or contest the attitudes and values of different communities and cultures (i.e., Woodstock, Rumble). You will learn in particular how arguments are created through narrative strategies and structures, and how music and the visual combine to make these arguments. We’ll consider, for example, how female artist’s stories get told versus male and we’ll ask how movements such as punk, folk, and Afrofuturism use music as social commentary. A background in film or music is in no way required or essential for this course.

Winter 2022

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FIGHT THE FUTURE: SPECULATIVE FICTION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

 SOUND & MUSIC: THE RHETORIC OF MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

PWR 2
Instructor: Tiffany Naiman
Winter 2022, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-11:15 & 11:30-1:15
4 Units

Film and music have been linked since the invention of moving pictures accompanied by organ music in theaters. But what does it mean when the film is all about the music, its creators, or musical events, or cultures? This course introduces you to the rhetoric, history, and aesthetics of music documentaries by helping you to cultivate the research-based writing and speaking skills to investigate how music documentaries develop their claims about a musical artist’s creativity or place in musical history (i.e., Beyoncé: Homecoming). The influence of music documentaries is immense, as they reinforce or contest the attitudes and values of different communities and cultures (i.e., Woodstock, Rumble). You will learn in particular how arguments are created through narrative strategies and structures, and how music and the visual combine to make these arguments. We’ll consider, for example, how female artist’s stories get told versus male and we’ll ask how movements such as punk, folk, and Afrofuturism use music as social commentary. A background in film or music is in no way required or essential for this course.

Spring 2022

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COUNTERSTORY PRACTICE IN LITERATURE AND MEDIA

EDUC, LIFE, CSRE 141A
Instructor: Jonah Willihnganz
Spring 2022, Time TBD
4 units, WRITE-2
Counterstory is a method developed in critical legal studies that emerges out of the broad “narrative turn” in the humanities and social science. This course explores the value of this turn, especially for marginalized communities, and the use of counterstory as analysis, critique, and self-expression. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we examine counterstory as it has developed in critical theory, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory literatures, and explore it as a framework for liberation, cultural work, and spiritual exploration. This course will share some lectures and workshops with its companion course, Counterstory in Literature and Education, but this section satisfies the WRITE-2 (PWR2) requirement, so students will focus more intensively on the story creation and writing process.

IT’S THE FREAKIEST SHOW: DAVID BOWIE’S INTERTEXTUAL IMAGINATION

English 14Q
Instructors: Tiffany Naiman
Spring 2022, Monday & Wednesday 10 am – 11:20 am
WRITE-2, WAYS All

David Bowie’s career began in the early 60s with a mix of folk, rock, and psychedelia; he then helped define an era with his performance of a gender bending, glam rock alien prior to engaging with German expressionism and minimalist electronic music; in the ‘80s, he brought a generation to the dance floor with chart topping hits before turning to drum ‘n bass and industrial music for inspiration; he finished his life as an enigmatic but engaged artist releasing poignant albums until his death. Through these many transitions, Bowie had a constant – he was a voracious reader – a practice that informed his work throughout his life. 

In this class students will explore the place of literature in the work of musician, actor, and visual artist David Bowie. They will consider how Bowie’s work embodies, questions, critiques, and engages with “the literary.” This course will focus on the relationship between Bowie’s artistic output and work by other artists, both canonical and Avant Garde such as Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Elliot, and William Burroughs. It will involve close readings of song lyrics and comparative reading of albums with literary forms such as the novel, poetry, and critical essay. We will also consider how Bowie’s music was fueled by and in turn inspires new relationships between music, literature, cinema, and theater. Bowie’s work easily adapts from text to other media including film, painting, and theater. Thus, the story of your research will be no exception: in communicating your findings, you will consider how different modes—writing about your work and presenting it orally—give you varied opportunities and means to persuade.

MEETING THE MOMENT: INNER RESOURCES FOR HARD TIMES