Student Scholars Day 2013 Presentation and Event Information
Student Scholars Day 2013 Presentation and Event Information
Details of the SSD presentations and events will be listed below. Please visit this page often as we will be adding information as it becomes available.
Presentation Documents:
Abstract Book: PDF ; ISSU (coming soon)
If you or your department would like to specific reports based on departments, please email ours@gvsu.edu with your request.
Program Schedule:
Poster and Oral Presentations
Kirkhof Center and Henry Hall Atrium
9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Keynote Lecture
Kirkhof Center 2204
Hors d'oeuvres 5:30 p.m.
Lecture 6:00 p.m.
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?
Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.
But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.
Jonathan Gottschall
Department of English, Washington & Jefferson College
Jonathan Gottschall writes books at the intersection of science and art. He is a leading figure in a new movement to bridge the divide between the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities. His most recent work, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection), draws on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology and biology to show how storytelling has evolved as a fundamental human instinct. Jonathan teaches in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania and blogs about the mysteries of storytelling at Psychology Today.
While his Ph.D. is in English, his main dissertation advisor was the prominent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, and he splits his academic writing between scientific and literary journals. He has also written for New Scientist, The Boston Globe, Seed Magazine, The Huffington Post, NPR and BBC Radio, and the blogs of The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. His work has been featured in outlets like The New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, Oprah Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Described by Steven Pinker as “a brilliant young scholar, Jonathan is the author or editor of six books, including The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence and the World of Homer and Literature, Science, and a New Humanities. Gottschall lives with his wife and two young daughters in Washington, PA.
Page last modified March 26, 2013
