Composition: History & Theory: 2000 - 2009
College English, Volume 71, No. 3: 2009
Description
Special Topic: Creative Writing in the Twenty-First Century
CONTENTS
Opinion: What We Say When We Don’t Talk about Creative Writing (Gerald Graff): In this article, Graff laments the distance between the various specializations in English departments, but especially that between creative writing and literature, and then subsequently composition and rhetoric. Like D.G. Myers, he suggests that programs in creative writing have drifted from an original purpose of creating more of a link between literary scholarship and contemporary creative work. He traces this animosity through a history of those who write being wary of those who criticize, and more broadly suggests that our current culture reflects an attitude toward literary scholarship that it ruins the pleasure of reading. Undergraduates, he suggests, may be choosing the creative writing track often to avoid a more heavy theory and criticism requirement that they feel ruins their personal reading experience. Graff recalls being an external reviewer for an English department, in which he met with creative writers and theorists back to back, and their own attitudes reflected disdain for and distrust of one another. He quotes one creative writer who feared the English department was being taken over by theorists as saying, “Dr. Graff, you have to understand: these people are crazy. Their goal is to destroy literature!” (272). Meanwhile the theorists he interviewed did not take the work the creative writers did seriously. Though Graff feels that some of the general fears about theory taking over have subsided, the strands of English departments are still not talking to one another. He criticizes the way creative writing programs are set up specifically because they require students to take courses in literature and in theory, but make little or no effort to connect these classes to the students’ own writing. He suggests as a solution, that we should create courses that are team taught by creative writing and literature faculty, and a further step would be to then pair creative writing courses with literature courses for a cohort of students. Graff only briefly mentions the lack of connection between rhetoric and composition and either of the two other specializations of English departments, but he does suggest, that thy too need to be integrated and talking to one another. He writes: “The opposition between literary and nonliterary discourse seems also to have been reinforced by the hardening of the separation between literary study and composition, which, in turn, is deepened and reified by the two-tier system in which the ‘regular’ faculty teaches literature and mostly graduate students and contingent faculty members teach composition” (276-7). Reconsiderations: Writers Wanted: A Reconsideration of Wendy Bishop (Patrick Bizzaro): Bizzaro begins the article with two quotes from Wendy Bishop (a poet and scholar of rhetoric and composition who regularly wrote on the ways that creative writing and composition should be linked, who recently passed away in 2003):
- “Writers’ insights can be joined to composition research and theory to further clarify what it means to be a writer and have a writing process” (Released into Language 19).
- “I can no more imagine being a writing teacher who does not write than I can imagine one who does not read” ("Places to Stand” 14).
Bizarro advocates a reconsideration of Bishop’s work, which has been labeled expressivist (a label she accepted, but stretched) and then recently dismissed. Bizarro stresses Bishop’s pedagogical concern for relying on writers’ reports, which she lamented, toward the end of her life, had fallen out of vogue. The Writer’s Chronicle, a publication of AWP, has, however, picked up where composition left off, and still relies heavily on writers’ reports for insight into teaching creative writing. Bizzaro looks specifically at Bishop’s work, “Places to Stand” which asks the question, “why writers have been dismissed from the conversation of the discipline: ‘I wonder on what grounds such a debate has been waged, and why’” (qtd. 260). He admits that previously, her reliance on cognitive methodology, ended up weakening her position on looking at writers’ self-reports when cognitivists also came under critique. Bizarro calls for researchers to come up with a new hybrid-methodology that can address the concerns of social-epistemic rhetoric while also studying the way that creative writers write. He cites our own Sherrie Gradin’s term “social expressivism” as a beginning point for such research.
ADDITIONAL ARTICLES: One Simple Word: From Creative Writing to Creative Writing Studies (Tim Mayers): Mayers looks at the rise of scholarship in Creative Writing Studies, which he sees as being composed of three strands: the pedagogical (which he says is the most developed so far, and he refers to Wendy Bishop as a pioneer here); the strand of institutional history (see Graff, Myers and Wibers); and least developed so far is the theoretical strand (see Clark and Hawk). Mayers calls for more work, especially in this last strand. A good quote from Mayers: “Although creative writing resists (and sets itself in opposition to) ‘theory,’ creative writing studies embraces theory as a necessary and indispensable--even if often problematic and imperfect--element of the profession” (219). ‘To Be Lived’: Theorizing Influence in Creative Writing (Mary Ann Cain): A quote from the Cain article: “postmodernist theories of identity hold the potential to reclaim some of modernism’s powers of collective identification in light of their relationship to space. Yet creative writing programs still rely on the modernist author and shun collective efforts to question authorship, emphasizing instead the unique and unreproducible aspects of individual ‘voice’"(234-5). Cain calls for a theorization of influence in creative writing, drawing on Foucault and Soja, and relying on collective inquiry. A House Divided: On the Future of Creative Writing (Kimberly Andrews): Similar to Graff’s opinion article, Andrews wants creative writing to be in dialogue with literature in a way it is not now. She writes: “Reading for creative writers must be viewed as a critical practice, one informed and complicated by context, history, and theory” (242).
CONNECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS (Lydia M.)
This issue is an excellent resource for anyone interested in investigating the intersections of creative writing, composition, and literature. I like it very much, probably because it reflects many of my own fledgling opinions about the field. However, a drawback to this issue might be its solidarity. Everyone seems to be calling for more connection with theory. The issue would benefit from some dissenting views within the field of creative writing: writers who want creative writing to stay “creative writing” and not add that contentious word, “studies.”
Date of Upload
3/15/09