Creative Writing Courses Are Useless: Creative Writing Programs and the Italian Literary System

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Cecilia Ghidotti
Keyword(s):  
Creative Writing ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Creative Writing Programs ◽  
Literary System

scholarly journals Information Literacy and Instruction: Embedding Information Literacy in an MFA Novel Workshop

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
John Glover
Keyword(s):  
Creative Writing ◽  
Faculty Member ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Creative Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Virginia Commonwealth University ◽  
Creative Writing Programs

The rise of graduate creative writing programs in the United States during the twentieth century has been well documented. Less well documented is their connection with academic libraries, particularly in terms of their students’ acquisition of research skills. When I was asked by a faculty member to provide in-depth support for the MFA novel writing workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), there were a few articles treating this topic, a few references in creative writing pedagogy books, and a couple suggestive course titles listed in MFA program curricula. In 2012–13, I served as the embedded librarian in this year-long workshop. In that role, I worked with the faculty member to develop assignments that helped students to incorporate research into their fiction-writing practice, met with students for two lengthy research workshops, and subsequently met with students individually as their research deepened.

Saint Flannery, Approximately: O’Connor and the Dogma of Creative Writing

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-233
Author(s):  
Eric Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Creative Writing ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Writing Workshop ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Creative Writing Programs

Eric Bennett examines O’Connor’s legacy in an influential but often overlooked venue: the creative writing workshop. Bennett argues that creative writing programs have benefitted from O’Connor’s success story, but they have also mischaracterized her method as a writer. Bennett demonstrates how manuals and instruction in creative writing laud the practice of not knowing where one’s fiction is going during the writing process, and often some of O’Connor’s words get marshaled in support of this approach. Bennett claims that such uses of O’Connor both distort who she was and demonstrate how impoverished current theories of fiction often are.

Contemporary Fiction and Modernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Trimm
Keyword(s):  
Creative Writing ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Creative Writing Programs

Modernism stands as the signal literary upheaval of the long 20th century, and yet the tenuousness of its appeal to “make it new,” as Ezra Pound commanded, entails the period or periods that follow are likewise uncertain save in their reference to modernism. However, even here there is ambivalence: contemporary authors might be charted regarding their modernist literary forebears, yet many explicitly reject modernist methods altogether; others continue this legacy, and still more look to complexly incorporate and negotiate modernist methods. Likewise, theoretical accounts of postwar fiction mark what comes after in reference to modernism: postmodernism, post-postmodernism, and the like. Modernism’s outsize shadow stems from its association with literary experimentation, aesthetic innovations elevating its austere emphasis on form above such traditional concerns as telling stories and creating characters. Though swaths of Anglophone fiction reject these modernist impulses and return to realist narratives, contemporary fiction must also be viewed as occurring within an era in which modernism has become institutionalized in university reading lists and the practices of their creative writing programs. Fiction after modernism thus might be best viewed as encompassing competing impulses, often within the same text or author: to revert to traditional modes of storytelling and thereby reject modernism; to borrow aspects of modernist technique but develop them so form might convey not only a sense of interior experience or textuality but also situate characters and texts socially (and globally); and to return afresh to those literary experiments, investing them with new relevance. These divided relations between contemporary fiction and aesthetic modernism underscore a complex and conflicted temporality operative within the very conceptions of both modernism and the contemporary.

scholarly journals Expressive and creative writing in the therapeutic context: From the different concepts to the development of writing therapy programs

Psychologica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Catarina Costa ◽  
Manuel Viegas Abreu
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Expressive Writing ◽  
Clinical Population ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Therapeutic Effects ◽  
Therapeutic Benefits ◽  
Selective Review ◽  
Creative Writing Programs

One of the main aims of this scoping selective review is to clarify the differences between expressive and creative writing in the mental health context, not only at a conceptual level but also regarding its therapeutic effects. The other one is to identify the more efficient ways to develop therapeutic creative writing programs for a clinical population. Considering these specific aims, we employed a selective review on the writing therapeutic literature. We found that, although expressive writing is clearly defined and its benefits on mental health empirically well established, creative writing lacks a consistent conceptualization in clinical settings. Similarly, we reported several studies focusing in the therapeutic benefits of poetry, but other writings genres receive much less attention and are even more insufficiently defined. Since some studies support the idea that giving a significant content to a text is more beneficial, and considering that writing creatively offers new perspectives and meanings to the information, we propose that the development of creative writing programs should be tried. Aiming to develop such programs in the future, we give some suggestions based on already studied expressive writing methods.

scholarly journals BEYOND “ACADEMICIZATION”: THE POSTWAR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD F. TEICHGRAEBER
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Degree Programs ◽  
Graduate Degree ◽  
World War ◽  
American University ◽  
Creative Writing Programs

The still astonishing expansion of the American university since World War II has transformed the nation's intellectual and cultural life in myriad ways. Most intellectual historians familiar with this period would agree, I suppose, that among the conspicuous changes is the sheer increase in the size and diversity of intellectual and cultural activity taking place on campuses across the country. After all, we know that colleges and universities that employ us also provide full- and part-time academic appointments to novelists, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, choreographers, composers, classical and jazz musicians, painters, photographers, and sculptors, even though most of them probably began their careers with little or no desire to join us in the halls of academe. This now widespread employment practice has decentralized the nation's literary and artistic talent. It also has made for a manifold increase in degree-granting programs in writing and the creative arts. One example will suffice here. When World War II ended, there were a small handful of university-based creative-writing programs. Over the course of the next thirty years, the number increased to fifty-two. By 1985, there were some 150 graduate degree programs offering an MA, MFA, or PhD. As of 2004, there were more than 350 creative-writing programs in the United States, all staffed by practicing writers and poets, many of whom now also hold advanced degrees in creative writing. (If one includes current undergraduate degree programs, the number grows to 720.)

Undergraduate Technical and Professional Writing Programs: A Question of Status

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald H. Cunningham ◽  
Jeanette G. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Creative Writing ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Professional Writing ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
Writing Program Administration ◽  
Writing Program ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Certificate Programs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range

The results of our recent survey of the membership of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, Associated Writing Programs, and the Council of Writing Program Administration indicate the relative health of undergraduate writing programs (major, concentration, or certificate programs, not service courses) in American four-year universities and colleges. During the past five years there has been a significant increase in the number of undergraduate writing programs, including technical and professional writing. But responses to our survey also suggest that while undergraduate technical and professional writing programs comprise the second largest group of programs (behind creative writing) they are not increasing as rapidly as a new kind of undergraduate writing program—a broad-based program that students can complete by taking a wide range of creative writing, composition, journalism, and technical and professional writing courses. The future seems unclear for traditional undergraduate technical and professional writing programs, and faculties need to examine their options in designing or redesigning their programs.

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