Brave Space-Making: The Poetics & Politics of Storytelling

Lynn M. Harter (PhD, University of Nebraska) is a professor and co-director of the Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact in the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. Her scholarship and teaching focus on the construction of possibility as individuals and groups organize for survival and social change amid embodied differences. She is committed to engaged scholarship in which she works with community members to explore what stories do for individuals and groups and develop narrative-based interventions. She has published more than 75 journal articles and book chapters, produced an Emmy award-winning documentary series for PBS, and is producer and host of the “Defining Moments Podcast” in partnership with the academic journal Health Communication.

Brittany L. Peterson (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies and the Director of E-Learning for the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. She aims to understand (and upend assumptions surrounding) the communicative construction of membership in organizations. Her scholarship investigates varied experiences including involuntary membership, “high stakes” and traditional voluntary membership, and stigmatized membership with an eye toward agency, ownership, tension, identity, narrative, empowerment, and community. Dr. Peterson’s work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Monographs, Health Communication, Western Journal of Communication, Communication Quarterly, and Non-Profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly as well as in edited books.