This thesis aims to examine how Native Americans survive through storytelling, using Linda Hogan¡¦s Solar Storms as my anchor text. The entire work proceeds in five chapters. The first chapter is my introduction. Chapter Two, ¡§Famine Stories,¡¨ delineates the mental starvation that Native Americans suffer. In this novel, there are abundant stories dealing with the trauma caused by colonial deprivation. Such stories are termed as ¡§famine stories,¡¨ which according to its influential level, is further divided into three kinds¡Xpersonal famine stories, familial famine stories, and communal famine stories. These stories intertwine with one another, and their causes can all be traced to the colonial history. Chapter Two, ¡§Feed Me Stories,¡¨ intends to seek a recovery from Native people¡¦s mental famine. Taking Angel¡¦s self-constructing journey as an example, I argue that storytelling reconnects the lost Native American with the lost past. In addition, stories reconstruct the Native worldview, which looks forward to harmony and balance between the human and non-human. Emerged in her grandmothers¡¦ storytelling, Angel comes to realize her mother culture and rebuild her Native identity. Moreover, she retrieves her correlation with the land, develops an intimacy with animals and plants and inherits her family tradition to be an herbal woman. She at last recovers from her psychical wounds. Chapter Three, ¡§The Future Storyteller,¡¨ sheds light on Hogan¡¦s intention to carry Native survivance into the future. Protesting against dam construction, Angel takes the tribal future as her responsibility. She devotes her love to nurturing the tribal youth and justifying her Native living right by revealing the deprivation which traumatizes the Native community. Her telling is powerful. It challenges the dominators¡¦ covering the truth up, and puts Native perspective into attention. She de-annihilates Native culture and assures its prosperity in the future. What she does corresponds to Gerald Vizenor¡¦s ¡§Native Survivance,¡¨ ensuring ¡§an active sense of presence,¡¨ and ¡§the continuance of native stories¡¨ (vii). The entire tribe is reunified due to storyteller¡¦s effort and the community is again ¡§the Beautiful People¡¨ (313).

Writing a good story requires immense patience, creativity and work from the author, and the practice of writing a story requires a good grasp of the readers' psychology to create suspense and thrills and to merge the readers' world with that of the story. In the digital writing space, authors can still adhere to these rules of thumb while being aware of the disappearance of certain constraints due to the added possibility of narrating in a nonlinear fashion. There are many overlapping approaches to interactive storytelling or authoring, but each of the approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses. The motivation for this research arises from the perceived need for a new hybrid approach that coalesces and extends existing approaches. Since each of the approaches empowers certain aspects of the storytelling and narration process, the result forces a new research direction which eliminates certain weaknesses exhibited by a single approach, due to the synergistic nature of the various approaches. We have developed: 1) a Hybrid Evolutionary-Fuzzy Time-based Interactive (HEFTI) storytellling engine that generates dynamic stories from a set of authored story constructs given by human authors; 2) a set of authoring tools that allow authors to generate the needed story constructs; and, 3) a storytelling environment for them to orchestrate a digital stage play with computer agents and scripts. We have conducted a usability study and system evaluation to evaluate the performance of the engine. Our experiments and usability study have shown that the authoring environment abstracted the complexity of authoring an interactive, dynamic story from the authors with the use of windows-based interfaces to help them visualize various aspects of a story. This reduces the amount of learning and knowledge required to start having the pleasure of authoring dynamic stories. The studies also revealed certain features and tools that may be reflected by authoring tools in the future to automate various aspects of the authoring process so that the authors may spend more time thinking rather than writing (or programming) their stories.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-169).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-188).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-91).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 322-328). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Repeated Stories is an exploratory project in textile design where the aim is to explore the design of storytelling patterns addressed to children. More precisely, the work examines how patterns can be designed as a tool to encourage curiosity and creativity among children. The work is practice-based, building on concrete experiments with a workshop character, where combinations of textile material, colour, printing techniques and scale are explored. The primary motive for this work is to take advantage of textile design expertise in a social context, to find new areas for competence in making repeats and patterns, and how a social value can be added to patterns. The result is an installation of three hanging textiles, meant for a public space, such as waiting room in a hospital. The work proposes an alternative approach to surface patterns by adding storytelling and give the patterns both a communicative and decorative function.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the use of contemporary storytelling practice in a museum setting can successfully engage visitor voices with objects. Specifically, this research used an exploratory case study to better understand Object Stories at the Portland Art Museum. The unique attributes inherent in Object Stories make it an exemplary program to research and through which to gain understandings regarding effective contemporary storytelling techniques within a museum. The use of digital archives, the creation of a safe space, and enabling visitors to share personal stories about museum objects are some of the qualities that set Object Stories apart from other contemporary storytelling programs in the United States. Four themes emerged through interviews, observations, and the study of documents forming a rich and detailed understanding of Object Stories. These themes are found within and help elucidate the successful characteristics of Object Stories. Based on the findings of this study, museum educators can look to this interactive gallery space at the Portland Art Museum to help them develop or enhance storytelling programs, and ultimately to improve the development of empathetic connections between visitors and museum objects. / text

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This study aims to explore and gain new insight into how one could tell a game-character's story through Environmental Storytelling. By doing this we hope to make game characters feel more real and alive, while at the same time furthering the game’s narrative. Before delving into the creation and examining of our game, we establish that it’s really important let the players come to their own conclusion regarding perceived story, even if they are inaccurate. After having created a game in an attempt to answer our question at issue we let other people play the game. We believe this is important as we, the creators of the game, already know everything there is to know about the character in question. The research uses Actor Network Theory as its methodology, as we believe it can help us understand relationships to why something works or doesn’t work. This research concludes that it’s all the small details that adds up, enriching a character's story. / Den här undersökningen syftar på att utforska och finna nya insikter kring hur man kan berätta en spelkaraktärs story genom Environmental Storytelling. Med detta hoppas vi kunna göra så att spelkaraktärer känns mer levande och äkta, och samtidigt främja spelets narrativ. Innan vi gräver ner oss i skapandet och undersökandet av spelet i vår undersökning, fastställer vi att det är väldigt viktigt att låta spelarna dra sina egna slutsatser kring hur de uppfattar storyn, även ifall de är felaktiga. Efter vi skapade spelet för att försöka besvara vår frågeställning, bjöd vi in folk till att testa vår spel. Vi tror att det är viktigt med andras feedback och erfarenheter då vi som spelskapare redan ränner till allt om karaktärens story. Den här undersökningen använder sig av “Actor Network Theory” som metodologi, vi tror att det kan hjälpa oss se samband och relationer kring varför saker funkar eller inte. Undersökningen drar slutsatsen att det är alla små detaljer som berikar karaktärens story.