ABSTRACT
Our study examines the processes through which Emerge—a six-month training with a cohort of women interested in running for public office in the United States—integrates a sisterhood narrative as part of its organizational identity and how the participants engage with and co-create their own sisterhood narratives at multiple levels. Drawing upon Brown’s (2006) five critical underpinnings of a narrative approach to collective identity (reflexivity, voice, plurivocity, temporality, and fictionality), this study provides support for each element and introduces a sixth key aspect: place. Additionally, this study theorizes the importance of nested narratives that highlight how multiple narratives can exist within a collective identity, and the discursive disjunctions that might surface between the narratives.
