“What is a narrative?” Yoon Sun Lee, Anne Pierce Rogers Professor in American Literature and professor of English, asked her colleague Jonathan Adler.
“You’ve asked me that three times today,” Adler replied. “Why does that question feel so important?”
Such conversations are the heart of Wellesley’s Narrative Lab, one of the new programs that make up the innovative Humanities Hub, which is supported by the $1.5 million grant awarded to Wellesley’s humanities faculty in the 2023 Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” competition. The grant will fund the three-year “Transforming Stories, Spaces, Lives” project; the grant proposal describes the Humanities Hub as a “multipurpose space” where students can pursue individual humanities research projects or work on research projects designed by humanities faculty. (The hub is currently in Founders Hall but will move into the newly renovated Clapp Library in August.)
In the Narrative Lab, three student research fellows and three humanities professors investigate narrative theory together. The unique environment enriches the students’ understanding of narratives and their many applications while allowing them to have input and participate in casual discussion.
So far the lab has run for two semesters, meeting once a week, and it has looked slightly different each time. “The lab is really experimental at this point, as we’re trying to do something that is not the most natural thing for humanist scholars to do, which is to build up collaborative methods,” says Josh Lambert, Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and English and co-director of the Narrative Lab. In the fall, the fellows created individual projects on narratives in media that interested them, presenting their findings at the Ruhlman Conference. The spring fellows focused more on conversations surrounding narratives. Regardless of the structure or subject of the research projects, the Narrative Lab provides students and faculty with a place to collaborate and discuss core issues in the studies of humanities.
The lab’s structure differs from a traditional class, allowing students to interact more directly with faculty. Both students and professors say participating in the lab has opened them up to new ideas.
I would argue that narratives matter because they are the tool we use for developing our identity. They help us make meaning of our lives and also weave us together as communities.
“I wasn’t expecting for it to be as discussion-based as it is … it really encourages me to think more critically when I’m reading and take better notes,” says Ruby Barenberg ’27. “It feels very cooperative, and I think that’s something you can’t really get in class.”
At one Narrative Lab meeting, Adler, the Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Humanities at Wellesley and co-director of The Story Lab at Olin College of Engineering, visited to introduce the field of narrative psychology. This session inspired students and faculty alike to mention personal stories, research, books, high school experiences, and social media movements.
“There’s obviously some teaching that goes on, especially in the first couple of weeks when we’re studying narrative theory,” says Lee, founder and co-director of the lab. She says it’s less about providing the syllabus or imparting certain concepts or knowledge: “It’s a much freer thing. We love to hear about what [the students] are interested in and ask them to bring examples of narratives.”
“It’s not like a traditional lab where we’re working on a professor’s proposal and research,” says Coco Zhang ’28. “It’s more of a collaborative space of learning and teaching.”
For the professors, the lab offers new opportunities for discussions with colleagues as well. “Sometimes it’s one of my colleagues teaching something or presenting something, and then it’s an opportunity for me to riff on that and see students riffing on it, and then a student asks a question that helps me think about what a colleague has said,” says Lambert. “That sort of interchange … hasn’t been so common in my career as a professor.”
Narrative Lab fellows are not just learning about narrative theory—they are earning a paycheck. They are paid for five hours of work a week, accounting for their meeting and time spent completing readings and questions ahead of their discussions.
“It was a big motive for the grant to offer opportunities like this to students in the humanities,” says Lee. “In the Science Center, it seems very common and very widespread that students are associated with labs. They have a huge and really well-organized program there … I wanted to build something like that in the humanities.”
Through the Mellon grant, the Narrative Lab and the larger Humanities Hub will be funded for two more years. After that, Lee hopes to renew the grant or otherwise keep it going through College funding.
“It’s really cool that we’re able to fund humanities research at a time when funding for [these disciplines] feels very precarious,” says Barenberg. “We get this really unique opportunity at Wellesley to be able to do that.”
But going back to Lee’s question: What is a narrative, and why are narratives so important that students should be paid to think about, discuss, and research them? “I would argue that narratives matter because they are the tool we use for developing our identity,” says Adler. “They help us make meaning of our lives and also weave us together as communities.”
“Narratives are the way that, as individuals and groups, we come to terms with time, change, other minds, and the world we inhabit,” Lee adds. “We are story-telling animals; the narrative is us.”