2023 - 2024 Humanities Labs

Politics and storytelling

Professor Nicholas Buccola

How can we use storytelling to gain political wisdom? How might political wisdom inform our storytelling? In this Humanities Lab, we will answer these questions in a variety of ways. We will seek to understand some of the fundamental components of a “story world,” including character, setting, tone, and theme. We will do this by developing our skills as viewers, interpreters, and critics of storytelling on the screen, page, and stage. As we engage in this work, we will be especially attentive to how storytelling can help ask and answer ultimate questions in politics. By ultimate questions, I mean those questions concerned with fundamental matters about how we ought to live together. What is the obligation, for example, of a just person in an unjust society? How can we balance our sense of responsibility to our family with our sense of responsibility to the community? The lab will culminate with each participant pitching a limited series or film that has something to do with politics, broadly understood. These ideas will be shared in a “pitch-fest” in which students will present their creative visions to each other and (possibly) some guest artists.

This lab will normally meet every other Tuesday from 6:30pm to 8:30pm with the first meeting scheduled for Tuesday, September 26th.

*This schedule may change on some occasions due to the timing of performances / screenings, the availability of guest speakers, and the holiday schedule. You can check the tentative meeting schedule here.

Application Deadline: Sunday, September 10th at 5PM

Research Assistants

Asia Best ’27

Kevin Chen ’27

Peter Dien ’25

Kendall Higgins ’27

Yuji Jones ’27

Cole Kosch ’26

Felix Kuang ’27

Stacey Leyva ’26

Rohan Matthew ’27

Reeyan Udani ’27

Vivian Wang ’26