The Power of Stories to Change the World

ABOUT THE LECTURE

This November marks the 70th anniversary of CS Lewis’s essay in the New York Times about the power of storytelling to shape culture. A fitting time to kick-off this new series on Storytelling! Sarah-Jane Murray, EMMY-nominated screenwriter, producer of documentaries, author, and associate professor at Baylor University, also believes that stories, when they are well-told, can change the world. Just as Lewis wrote about the power of stories to “steal past the watchful dragons” of our logical minds, Sarah-Jane shares how the stories we tell (and consume) inform the world we live in, how we see and interact with each other, and where we go next.

ABOUT SARAH-JANE MURRAY

At 12 years old, Sarah-Jane was drawn to 16th-c. French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s ideals for education: to form well-made, rather than well-filled heads. Montaigne’s Essays inspired a quest to cultivate critical thinking and read primary sources: she learned Latin and Ancient Greek in order to read some of his favorite sources of critical thinking like Cicero, Seneca, Plato, and Aristotle.

This commitment to primary sources and rational inquiry led her — instead of to law school, as once intended — to a PhD at Princeton in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures, with a primary emphasis in Medieval & Renaissance Studies and keen attention to original, primary sources (especially manuscripts). During this time Sarah-Jane also spent extensive time abroad, studying manuscript culture, linguistics, and digital humanities at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines under the direction of Prof. Christiane Marchello-Nizia.

This period of intellectual inquiry resulted in her first book, From Plato to Lancelot: A Preface to Chretien de Troyes (Syracuse UP, 2008), and eventually led to her directing the decade-long translation project for the medieval French Ovide Moralisé (2012-2023), in collaboration with longtime friend and colleague Prof. Matthieu Boyd (2016-2023).Guided by the belief that knowledge of the foundations of a free society is needed more than ever, and inspired by an upper-level seminar she taught with Prof. Marie Helene Huet at Princeton in Literature & Politics, Sarah-Jane came to the Honors College at Baylor University and the Great Texts Program to help her students cultivate “well-formed” minds, pursue wisdom, and flourish as whole human beings.

By engaging in the “Great Conversation” across time and space with her students, a key theme of Sarah-Jane’s ongoing research & creative projects emerged: the role storytelling has in shaping us as human beings, but also in shaping and influencing society. These questions eventually led her from medieval manuscripts into the world of Film & Digital Media, and to exploring how fair, balanced, and truthful storytelling can bolster the Fourth Estate.

An EMMY®-nominated writer and producer (for her 2014 feature-length documentary “Primary Concern” on the US healthcare system), Sarah-Jane also teaches screenwriting and documentary filmmaking in Baylor’s Department of Film & Digital Media. Most notably, she pioneered the course (and workshop) in Filmmaking for Social Change, in which students learn the art of social-impact documentary within a guiding framework of civic and democratic engagement, informed by key founding documents like the Constitution & Bill of Rights, and discussions about freedom of the press, as well as core philosophical and ethical principles about storytelling.

Her body of collaborative work has played at major international film festivals and has been distributed by PBS, LinkTV, Amazon, and Netflix. At present, she is in post-production on her feature-length directorial debut . Sarah-Jane’s writing, producing, and directing for short formats has also been recognized with over twenty international creative awards, including the Silver TELLY® for excellence in video and television, and Communicator Awards® of Excellence and Distinction from the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts. In 2018, she was selected as one of the #50Women[who]Can change the media & entertainment industries and in 2020 she was awarded the “Film in Action” achievement award from the Ouray International Film Festival. She is a founding advisory council member of BEL (Bridge Entertainment Labs) in Hollywood, dedicated to transforming the way Americans see and engage with each other across political divides, and a fellow of the Institute for the Study of Religion (ISR).

In the summer of 2023, Sarah-Jane’s quest to break down barriers of access to engaging with the Great Texts while inspiring awe, wonder, and critical thinking led to the founding of her edumedia™ project, The Greats Story Lab™. Because the stories we tell (and consume) shape and inform the world we live in, how we see and interact with each other, and where we go next.

ABOUT THE SERIES

In this time when technology has opened doors to understanding and efficiency, it has also taken the place of the human voice, and the ready connection available from person to person. We seek to offer a reminder of the role of storytelling in our shared humanity—stories to remind us of who we are and to awaken dignity and the Divine Spark in each of us. This series will celebrate our shared love of story, exploring how stories are told through architecture, music, landscape, design, poetry, film, theatre and finance.