Third Coast Pocket Conference

Two moments are colliding: An oppressive politics of hate and repression, and a boom in narrative storytelling. So how do we use one to confront the other? It’s time to think deeply, meta-critically, and proactively about the work of narrative storytelling; to challenge the ways that podcasts privilege whiteness, quirkiness, empathy, and centrism, using a critical reframing lens.At the 2018 Third Coast Conference, Chenjerai Kumanyika (Rutger’s Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, host of Uncivil & contributor to Seeing White) and Sandhya Dirks (KQED reporter and host of American Suburb) offered techniques to explode traditional narratives. How do we reframe the way we conceive, report, and compose stories?This session challenges the illusion that there is an innocent, objective, or purely entertaining story. All stories are stories about power, and our power as storytellers is to better interrogate the structures that shape, and too often determine, not just our understandings but people’s lives.You