Against Creative Writing

Description

The rise of Creative Writing has been accompanied from the start by two questions: can it be taught, and should it be taught? This scepticism is sometimes shared even by those who teach it, who often find themselves split between two contradictory identities: the artistic and the academic. Against Creative Writing explores the difference between ‘writing’, which is what writers do, and Creative Writing, which is the instrumentalisation of what writers do. Beginning with the question of whether writing can or ought to be taught, it looks in turn at the justifications for BA, MA, and PhD courses, and concludes with the divided role of the writer who teaches. It argues in favour of Creative Writing as a form of hands-on literary education at undergraduate level and a form of literary apprenticeship at graduate level, especially in widening access to new voices. It argues against those forms of Creative Writing that lose sight of literary values – as seen in the proliferation of curricular couplings with non-literary subjects, or the increasing emphasis on developing skills for future employment. Against Creative Writing, written by a writer, is addressed to other writers, inside or out Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. ‘research-intensive’: the disciplining of Creative Writing 2. ‘the logic of the academy’: the purpose of the PhD 3. ‘a context of reinforcement and support’: writing vs Creative Writing 4. a ‘profusion – or confusion – of roles’: my divided self 1. Can it be taught? should it be taught? 1. ‘A flourishing discipline’: some numbers 2. ‘Learning by doing’: the American invention of Creative Writing 3. ‘A cultural intervention’: UEA’s adoption of Creative Writing 4. ‘committees and monitorial personages’: the internal resistance to Creative Writing 5. ‘It gets learned’: Creative Writing’s disciplinary self-doubt 6. ‘Diligently finessed but slightly anodyne’: the institutionalisation of writing 7. ‘cultural capital’: institutionality and social mobility 8. ‘cultural matching’: some more numbers 9. ‘You’d call it a creative-writing class, now, I suppose’: noninstitutional institutionality 2. What is the point of undergraduate creative writing? 1. ‘an extreme end of the spectrum’: the vital link with literature 2. ‘passion and lostness and wonderment’: what is literature? 3. ‘the palpability of signs’: foregrounding, automatisation, and defamiliarisation 4. ‘a sociological poetics’: Paul Dawson’s critique of Creative Writing 5. ‘naively uncritical and untheorized’: lore versus learning outcomes 6. ‘a significant advantage’: employability and the neoliberal academy 7. ‘the private and the public’: the expressive self meets identity politics 8. ‘Who takes up space?’: Janelle Adsit’s critique of Creative Writing 9. ‘a knowledge we don’t yet possess’: writing, the self, and writing the self 3. Does the graduate workshop work? 1. ‘Why Not Be A Writer?’: the promise of the graduate programme 2. ‘the cultural field’: Attridge, Csikszentmihalyi, and the work of peer-review 3. ‘can it even be called a workshop anymore?’: some versions of the workshop 4. ‘a peculiarly perverse methodology’: some critiques of the workshop 5. ‘a profoundly foreign place’: some further critiques of the workshop 6. ‘smudgy squares’: what does writing know? 7. ‘assumptions, values, and ideologies’: Creative Writing’s blind spots 8. ‘a life event’: the workshop that works 4. Must a writer be a doctor? 1. ‘supplementary discourses’: reflective practice on the BA 2. ‘gratuitous mystification’: reflective practice and the professional author 3. ‘complementary or primary’: reflective practice at postgraduate level 4. ‘a continuing lack of certainty’: the question of the exegesis 5. ‘a recognisable contribution to knowledge’: the purpose of the PhD 6. ‘professional reproduction’: another purpose of the PhD 5. Is creative writing research writing? 1. ‘excluding artistic “research” of any kind’: writing vs research 2. ‘agnostic thinking’: creative writing as practice-led research 3. ‘reflection, decoding and translation’: Borgdorff, Barrett, Biggs 4. ‘fish out of water’: some critiques of practice-led research 5. ‘originality, significance and rigour’: assessing Creative Writing Conclusion 1. Introduction 2. Can it be taught, should it be taught? 3. What is the point of undergraduate Creative Writing? 4. Does the graduate workshop work? 5. Must a writer be a doctor? 6. Is creative writing research writing? 7. Conclusion Index