The Neverending Story: Cultural Evolution and Narratives
Lecture 2: Introduction II
This lecture goes into more detail regarding a Darwinian cultural evolution approach to narratives. It explains how stories meet the criteria for Darwinian evolution and introduces some of the techniques researchers have used to examine the cultural evolution of narratives. The exercise gives you the chance to construct a phylogenetic tree for the classic folktale, Red Riding Hood.
Resources
Slides: (pdf)
Readings:
ATU333 Stories document (pdf) (txt)
Exercise:
Instructions (pdf)
Work sheet (pdf)
(docx)
Model answer (pdf)
This project was supported by Grant #61105 from the John Templeton Foundation to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (PIs: S. Gavrilets and P. J. Richerson) with assistance from the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity and the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
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