Zytkoskee 1
NOTE: Although I like the formatting and the direction this essay is heading, it is absolutely a rough draft. I intend to
include an entire section which illustrates examples of narrative scholarship produced by my students including a piece
written about the gang related murder of a student in our class, a piece written by a young man who survived a bombing in
Iraq, and a piece discussing Munchausen disease and how a young woman ruined all her friendships because of it. When
it’s completed, this piece could be anywhere from 15 – 25 pages depending upon how much detail and length are desired.
Adrian Matthew Zytkoskee
Department of Writing Studies
The American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Narrative Scholarship: Writing Life into Academia
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it,
rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless,
because they cannot think new thoughts.
-Salman Rushdie
Narrative Scholarship, the combining of story and research, is not a new concept. Take a
stroll through any book store and you will find an array of titles offering just such an approach.
Authors like Stephen Hawkins, Terry Tempest Williams, and Bill Bryson offer perfect examples
of academics who heavily rely upon narrative as a means for giving form to their abstract
concepts and data. And, despite the traditional attitude often found in academia which demeans
and excludes the use of narrative in “scholarly work,” the fact that through narrative scholarship
Hawkins writes best sellers about Quantum Physics, Bryson is able to simultaneously educate
and entertain regarding the biological world, and Williams effectively defends the ecology of our
planet through her very personal narratives, demonstrates that the combination of research with
narrative is both a versatile and powerful methodology. Although, as illustrated by the
aforementioned authors, narrative scholarship may find application in just about any rhetorical
situation, the focus of this particular essay will be upon the composition classroom for two
reasons. First, as a composition teacher, this is the space in which my own research and stories