Editorial: Introduction to the Emerging Horizons Series (2022)

This editorial introduces the serialization of Mike’s PhD thesis in the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. Below is an excerpt explaining the scope of the article:

“The “Emerging Horizons” series in the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics and the editorials that accompany it, are all based on a film of the same name which acted as the primary data source for my PhD thesis. The film explores the Digital Storytelling (DST) workshop experiences of a group of six Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) cancer survivors. It is a 53-minute film crafted from almost 30 hours of footage, and in the same way that numerous salient moments from the workshop were necessarily left on the “cutting room floor,” many possible interpretations were culled from the interpretive papers of this series. Indeed, aletheia reminds us that covering, and uncovering are always concurrent events (Caputo, 1987) and together, the film and the interpretations offered provide only one possible path to understanding what could occur as people create digital stories about their healthcare experiences. The primary goal of the film was to maintain the incommensurability between what an artwork says and what it is capable of saying so that the viewer can have the experience of something emerging (Davey, 2013); the interpretive writing serialized in JAH is meant to keep that conversation going. The remainder of this introductory editorial will set the stage for the series by briefly reviewing the topics of AYA oncology and DST, exploring the fit of applied hermeneutic research with documentary filmmaking, and finally, “dimming the lights” to promote an intellectual shift in engagement with both the film and the interpretive writing that follows.”

Lang, M.J. (2022). Crafting Meaning, Cultivating Understanding: A Prologue to the “Emerging Horizons” Series. Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. doi:10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74855