Jenny Brewer

30 September 2011

Research Plan for Research Project (Journal)

My research plan proposes a research project in journal form to cover my exploration of the power of narrative.  In the course of writing my midterm I encountered Paisley Livingston's article "Narrativity and Knowledge."  Many of the assertions therein were intriguing to me, and I would like to follow up on these by investigating the sources cited by the article's author, and then connecting them to course materials. I feel that doing this will greatly enhance my understanding of objective 2.

In particular, i am interested in a list of "putative epistemic merits or demerits of narratives or stories" which appears in the article.  I feel that I can find examples of many of the items listed within the works we are reading in this seminar.  For example: (list item "1") "narratives embody or encourage the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc." A journal entry could be created around this idea that might cite several manifestations of same within assigned novels, and then show how this could be harmful or beneficial.