Society for the Study of Narrative Literature

Society for the Study of Narrative Literature
Name	Society for the Study of Narrative Literature
Formation	1987
Type	Scholarly society
Headquarters	New York, NY
Leader title	President
Leader name	Maria Sánchez

Society for the Study of Narrative Literature is a learned society dedicated to the scholarly study of narrative forms, narrative theory, and narrative history across literature, film, and digital media. Founded in the late 20th century, the organization brings together scholars, critics, editors, and archivists from universities, museums, and cultural institutions worldwide to promote research, pedagogy, and public engagement. Its activities intersect with major literary journals, university presses, and international conferences.

History

The society was established in 1987 amid debates that involved scholars affiliated with Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and Yale University. Early meetings drew participants from programs such as Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and Brown University. Founding figures included academics who had published with Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Princeton University Press, and University of California Press. Key formative events connected the society to conferences at Modern Language Association, American Comparative Literature Association, International Congress of the Medieval Studies, PEN America, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Over ensuing decades the society engaged with initiatives at Library of Congress, British Library, Smithsonian Institution, Getty Research Institute, and New York Public Library.

Mission and Activities

The society’s mission clusters around promoting narrative studies, supporting scholars at institutions like University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Edinburgh, University of Melbourne, and University of Sydney, and advocating for archival access in institutions such as Vanderbilt University Special Collections, Harry Ransom Center, Bodleian Libraries, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and National Archives (UK). Activities include organizing panels at Society for Cinema and Media Studies, curating symposia with International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures, and advising publishers including Faber and Faber, Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury, Columbia University Press, and Harvard University Press. The society also runs workshops with professional bodies such as Modern Humanities Research Association, Association of University Presses, Digital Humanities Summer Institute, ACL Anthology, and Society of American Archivists.

Membership and Governance

Membership comprises faculty from King's College London, postdocs from Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, graduate students at Sorbonne University, independent scholars associated with Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and librarians from Morgan Library & Museum. Governance is managed by an elected board patterned after nonprofit models seen at American Council of Learned Societies, National Humanities Center, and Royal Historical Society. Officers have included fellows affiliated with Institute for Advanced Study, recipients of fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Committees collaborate with editorial boards at New Literary History, PMLA, Narrative, Critical Inquiry, and Studies in American Fiction.

Conferences and Publications

Annual meetings are held in rotation with partner campuses such as University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, and Duke University, and have convened special sessions at venues like Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and Tate Modern. Conference programming often features panels on authors and works connected to Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy, Gabriel García Márquez, Chinua Achebe, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The society publishes a peer-reviewed journal edited with partners at Routledge, Taylor & Francis, and Johns Hopkins University Press and produces monograph series with Manchester University Press, Oxford University Press, and Yale University Press. Special issues have focused on topics related to Medieval Studies, Renaissance drama, Enlightenment fiction, Modernism, Postcolonial literature, Contemporary American fiction, Latin American literature, and Digital storytelling.

Awards and Recognition

The society awards honors modeled after prizes like the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, and discipline-specific recognitions analogous to the James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association Prize, and Bancroft Prize. Past recipients include scholars whose work intersects with studies of Homer, Virgil, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath. The society also grants travel fellowships supported by foundations such as Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Rockefeller Foundation, and W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and research awards that echo grants from European Research Council and National Science Foundation.

Collaborations and Outreach

Collaborative partners include cultural and educational organizations like American Philosophical Society, National Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Victoria and Albert Museum, Centre Pompidou, Biblioteca Nacional de España, UNESCO, and Council of Europe. Outreach programs work with secondary-school initiatives such as National Writing Project, community archives like Black Cultural Archives, and international networks including Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, European Society for the Study of English, Asia Pacific Modern Literature Association, and Latin American Studies Association. The society maintains digital projects in collaboration with Internet Archive, HathiTrust, Europeana, Project Gutenberg, and Digital Public Library of America.

Category:Scholarly societies