Narratives of Impact: The Influence of Family Stories on Personal Meaning
A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778). This special issue belongs to the section "Family History".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 96
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Much of the scholarly work in genealogy/family history focuses on the best way to find and verify ancestor data. The impact of family narratives on family history investigators receives much less attention. The conference agenda and list of sessions at family history conferences such as RootsTech demonstrates the lopsided nature of this attention. The focus of this Special Issue, i.e., “Narratives of Impact: The Influence of Family Stories on Personal Meaning”, sits squarely on family narratives and the impact they have on family members and researchers, particularly the impact they have on personal meaning making. The scope of the Special Issue includes all forms of family narrative, the context of those narratives, and all kinds of impacts that follow the telling of these narratives. The purpose, then, of this Special Issue is to expand the extant body of literature by addressing the experience of creating family history and the impact of learning and telling family narratives.
Significant attention has been paid recently to the power of stories in our lives. A rise in storytelling is apparent from books like “The Science of Storytelling” (Storr, 2020) and “How to Tell a Story” (Bowles et al., 2022) and the popular radio show The Moth and their live story slams. Important scholarly work by Robyn Fivush, Jody Kellas, Susan More, Pam Jarvis, and others (see, for example, Fivush & Merrill, 2016, Jarvis, 2022; Moore, 2023; Lima, 2019; and Robinson, 2021) addressing the psychological impact of narratives in a family history context lay the groundwork for this Special Issue. We hope to build on these earlier works by devoting an entire Issue of this journal to the topic of family narrative and its impact on individuals, families and society. Please consider preparing an abstract and manuscript for Genealogy.
We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor (brian_hill@byu.edu) or to the Genealogy editorial office (genealogy@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purpose of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.
Reference
Bowles, M., Burns, C., Hixson, J., Jenness, S. A., & Tellers, K. (2023). How to tell a story: The essential guide to memorable storytelling from The Moth. Crown.
Fivush, R., & Merrill, N. (2016). An ecological systems approach to family narratives. Memory Studies, 9(3), 305-314. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698016645264
Jarvis, P. (2022). Ancestral selfies and historical traumas: Who do you feel you are? Genealogy, 6(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6010001
Lima, A. (2019). Family history and genealogy: The benefits for the listener, the storyteller and the community. Journal of Cape Verdean Studies, 4(1), 63-74.
Moore, S. M. (2023). Family history research and distressing emotions. Genealogy, 7(2), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7020026
Robinson, R. (2021). Pilgrimage and purpose: Ancestor research as sacred practice in a secular age. Genealogy, 5(4), 90. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5040090
Storr, W. (2020). The science of storytelling: Why stories make us human and how to tell them better. Abrams.
Dr. Brian Hill
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- family narratives
- storytelling
- meaning making
- family history
- genealogy
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