Creative Writing in the University

GRAEME HARPER AND JERI KROLL

1.

A triumvirate of practice, research and pedagogy defines Creative Writing as a subject in universities around the world. Writing is first and foremost a studio art, like its siblings – music, drama, dance, visual arts, and so on. The teaching of the arts and attendant critical understanding about how to communicate the intricacies of specific disciplines followed on the heels of their introduction into the academy at all levels. Although the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in the US is still, to some extent, thought of as primarily a practice-based (studio) degree, Masters and Doctoral study, generally, moved the discipline on to another plane because here the concept of Creative Writing as research began to be interrogated most vigorously. The movement of ideas between practice, research and pedagogy has now come full circle. Definitions of research and about the production of the type and forms of knowledge Creative Writing generates have begun to filter down to affect how Creative Writing is taught at undergraduate level in many institutions.

Witness the number of books published in recent years about the discipline. Likewise, research-led debates that in earlier times found their way occasionally into The Writer's Chronicle, the long-established organ of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and slightly more so perhaps into Writing in Education, the publication of the UK's National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE), are now able to be carried on regularly in independent specialist journals such as New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. Newer organisations have also developed their own international journals with tertiary education focuses, such as TEXT: the Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP, founded 1996), published biannually. Concomitantly, the research interests expressed in publications by NAWE, whose brief covers all levels of education from primary to tertiary, and in AWP publications as well, have increased.

The teaching of arts practice, and the attendant critical understanding of it, has long been a part of academe – in fact, since the birth of Higher Education. Yet, the formalising of education in The Arts – in Creative Writing in this specific case – has often led to questions about the nature of the intersection between practice, research into practice and the critical knowledge connected with it, and teaching. Constant movement of ideas between these three aspects – Creative Writing practice, university research and university teaching – is now more common in institutions worldwide, but it is not yet firmly established generally. Much work still needs to be done on the relationship between Creative Writing as a practice-led activity, critical understanding drawn from investigating that practice, and modes of teaching Creative Writing at university level. In other words, the principles, methodologies and theories underpinning the discipline are still emerging in a variety of cultural and institutional contexts.

Definitions of, and about, the production, types and forms of knowledge developed and used in Creative Writing have only just begun to filter down to the way Creative Writing is taught. With a strong international network now in place, new discipline-based knowledge can travel widely. That said, different arenas – international as well as within national borders – have seen alternative emphases at various times, and one of the most exciting elements of the now international sense of Creative Writing in universities is the scope and strength of debate.

2.

Prior to writing this chapter, we generated a number of questions. These were mostly concerned with what we might achieve in such a chapter in a book that would also present contributions about Creative Writing as a university discipline from the perspective of three geographical locations. Here are some of those questions that helped to demarcate what we believe are critical areas of investigation in the development of that site of knowledge called 'Creative Writing'.

What do we perceive as the subject content of Creative Writing in universities? What is its specific subject matter and what is related to it, but perhaps not core to its interests? Who chooses to study it, and what are their expectations? What indeed are the results of this studying? Where within the university is Creative Writing activity most often taking place? What sort of activities does it cover? How is it defined in light of other subjects in the university? How is it valued, and by whom? How do we conceive of research in Creative Writing, and what is the relationship between creative practice and critical understanding that is integral to that research? What is knowledge of, and about, Creative Writing, and to what ends is it used? How does what occurs within universities relate to Creative Writing activities beyond universities? The list could go on.

Readers should note the inclusion of the word 'studying' in the paragraph above, as well as the word 'within'. The reasons to use these two words are themselves twofold. Firstly, this is a chapter concerned with Creative Writing as it is studied in and around universities. Needless to say, it is not necessary to study Creative Writing in order to undertake some Creative Writing. Now and then, the question has been raised as to whether Creative Writing even benefits from being studied within universities at all. We'd be the last people to answer that question without bias. So, bias in hand, we might simply rephrase the question: 'Does any field of knowledge not benefit from being studied within a university?' There's little doubt that Creative Writing in and around universities is impacted upon by the nature of the university environment, and that the discipline, in turn, impacts upon that...