[Linganth] [CFP] 8th International Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN'25)

[Mark Finlayson]

CFP: 8th International Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative 
(CMN'25)

Advancing the Science of Narrative

---IMPORTANT DATES---
January 15, 2025. Submission deadline.
March 3, 2025. Notification of acceptance.
March 24, 2025.  Final Versions Due.
May 28- May 30, 2025.  Workshop in Geneva, Switzerland.

---WORKSHOP AIMS---
The Computational Models of Narrative (CMN) workshop series is dedicated 
to advancing the computationally-grounded scientific study of narrative, 
a crucial aspect of human experience used for communication, persuasion, 
explanation, and entertainment. Narrative, or storytelling, is a 
symbolic activity that imitates human actions through emplotment, 
representing discordant events through concordance. From myths to 
histories, narratives are ubiquitous across time, making understanding 
narrative intelligence essential to comprehending human intelligence. 
Narrative studies, aka narratology, has its root in Aristotle’s Poetics, 
thriving in the wake of the French New Rhetoric, where Todorov first 
coined “narratology” in 1969 to theorize narrative grammar based on 
structuralist linguistics. Despite criticism for its formalism and 
reduction, this characteristic enables the intersection of computer 
science and poetics, providing various structures for computational 
modeling.

Computer scientists have long tapped into the three-act structure, 
Freitag’s pyramid, Propp’s morphology, and Campbell’s or Vogler’s hero’s 
journey. Large Language Models (LLMs) boast their breakthrough in 
generating narratives, betraying traces of the structures mentioned 
above. Systems for narrative analysis and production are increasingly 
embedded in devices and processes, influencing decision-making in venues 
as diverse as politics, economics, intelligence, and cultural 
production. In order to appreciate this influence, it is becoming 
increasingly clear that research must address the technical 
implementation of narrative systems, the theoretical bases of these 
frameworks, and our general understanding of narrative at multiple 
levels, from the philosophical and cognitive impact of narratives to our 
ability to model narrative responses computationally.

We invite and encourage submissions either as full papers or position 
papers, through the workshop's website:

https://tecfa.unige.ch/cmn25/

Full papers should contain original research and be between 8 and 16 
pages; position papers can report on work-in-progress, research plans or 
projects and have to fit within eight pages. Accepted papers will be 
published in open access (Gold Road), free of charge.

---ILLUSTRATIVE TOPICS AND QUESTIONS---
- What are appropriate formal or computational representations for 
narrative?
- How is narrative knowledge captured and represented?
- Is narrative structure universal, or are there systematic differences 
in narratives from different cultures?
- What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts?
- What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs? Is there such a set?
- How do conceptions and models of spatiality or temporality influence 
narrative and cognitive systems?
- What are the details of the relationship between narrative and 
language, image, or sound?
- How are narratives affected by the media used to convey them?
- How far are we from a model of narrative adaptation across media?
- How can we study narrative from a cognitive point of view?
- Can narrative be subsumed by current models of higher-level cognition, 
or does it require new approaches?
- How do narratives mediate our cognitive experiences, or affect our 
cognitive abilities?
- How can narrative systems be applied to problem-solving?
- What are the details of the relationship between narrative and common 
sense?
- How should we evaluate computational and formal models of narrative?
- What shared resources are required for the computational study of 
narrative? What should a “Story Bank” contain?
- How are narratives indexed and retrieved? Is there a universal scheme 
for encoding episodic information?
- What shared resources and tools are available, or how can 
already-existent resources be adapted to the study of narrative?

---ORGANIZING COMMITTEE---
- Fanfan Chen (National Taipei University of Business, Taiwan)
- Antonio Lieto (University of Salerno, Italy)
- Rémi Ronfard (Inria, LJK, University of Grenoble, France)
- Nicolas Szilas (University of Geneva, Switzerland)