Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? (New Writing Viewpoints, Band 5) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847692680 ISBN 13: 9781847692689

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

This book explores the effectiveness of the workshop in the Creative Writing classroom, and looks beyond the question of whether or not the workshop works to address the issue of what an altered pedagogical model might look like. In visualising what else is possible in the workshop space, the sixteen chapters collected in 'Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?' cover a range of theoretical and pedagogical topics and explore the inner workings and conflicts of the workshop model. The needs of a growing and diverse student population are central to the chapter authors' consideration of non-normative pedagogies. The book is a must-read for all teachers of Creative Writing, as well as for researchers in Creative Writing Studies.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dianne Donnelly is the recipient of multiple teaching, scholarship, and writing awards and has published articles and short stories in a number of venues. She is also a frequent presenter at conferences on the subject of creative writing theory and pedagogy and the emergence of creative writing studies. She holds a PhD in English and teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida and Eckerd College.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?

By Dianne Donnelly

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2010 Dianne Donnelly and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-268-9

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
About the Authors, 
Foreword: On Experience Graeme Harper, 
Introduction: If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it; Or Change is Inevitable, Except from a Vending Machine Dianne Donnelly, 
Section One: Inside the Writing Workshop Model, 
1 Once More to the Workshop: A Myth Caught in Time Stephanie Vanderslice, 
2 Workshop: An Ontological Study Patrick Bizzaro, 
3 Small Worlds: What Works in Workshops If and When They Do? Philip Gross, 
4 Teaching as a Creative Act: Why the Workshop Works in Creative Writing Anna Leahy, 
5 Workshopping and Fiction: Laboratory, Factory, or Finishing School? Willy Maley, 
Section Two: Engaging the Conflicts, 
6 Poetry, F(r)iction, Drama: The Complex Dynamics of Audience in the Writing Workshop Tim Mayers, 
7 Engaging the Individual/Social Conflict within Creative Writing Pedagogy Brent Royster, 
8 Potentially Dangerous: Vulnerabilities and Risks in the Writing Workshop Gaylene Perry, 
9 'Its fine, I gess': Problems with the Workshop Model in College Composition Courses Colin Irvine, 
Section Three: The Non-Normative Workshop, 
10 The Creative Writing Workshop in the Two-Year College: Who Cares? David Starkey, 
11 Workshopping Lives Mary Ellen Bertolini, 
12 The Things I Used To Do: Workshops Old and New Keith Kumasen Abbott, 
Section Four: New Models for Relocating the Workshop, 
13 Re-envisioning the Workshop: Hybrid Classrooms, Hybrid Texts Katharine Haake, 
14 Introducing Masterclasses Sue Roe, 
15 Wrestling Bartleby: Another Workshop Model for the Creative Writing Classroom Leslie Kreiner Wilson, 
16 'A Space of Radical Openness': Re-Visioning the Creative Writing Workshop Mary Ann Cain, 
Afterword: Disciplinarity and the Future of Creative Writing Studies Joseph Moxley, 

CHAPTER 1

Workshop: An Ontological Study

PATRICK BIZZARO

Recent scholarship in creative writing has been descriptive. As early understandings of an emerging field, such descriptions enable us to do the important formative work of determining creative writing's place in English studies. These studies have focused chiefly on three areas: classroom activities (Ritter & Vanderslice, 2007; Moxley, 1989), epistemological foundations (Bishop, 1990; Haake, 2000; Starkey & Healey, 2007) and creative writing's indebtedness to other subjects in English studies (Myers, 1996; Mayers, 2005; Ritter, 2001). This last arena of study — influences on creative writing — interests me most because of the uncertainty it has left us with concerning creative writing's place in English studies. The few understandings we have reached about creative writing as an autonomous field have been influenced to a large extent by this uncertainty. In an effort to unravel some of this confusion, this essay begins where other recent studies of creative writing's disciplinary status have thus far ended, with English studies as 'a field divided into at least three parts — literature, composition, and creative writing' (Mayers, 2005: 6, see also Myers, 1996: 10–21, my emphasis). Because it elevates creative writing's place in English studies to the same level as literature and composition, this statement differs from other longstanding views of English studies. Susan Miller's (1991) Textual Carnivals and James Berlin's (1987) Rhetoric and Reality assert the belief that English studies is divisible into two parts only, literature (or the poetic) and composition (or the rhetoric). An ontological study of the workshop such as this one intends us to see creative writing as a product of influences from literature and composition but also as a field of study independent of the two. Saying so is no easy task, however, since we are at the start of research in creative writing and must develop methods consistent with the values and emphases of our field. Studies of workshop as a teaching strategy historically linked to creative writing do exactly that: provide a starting point.

After all, if it were possible to simply subtract literature and composition from English studies and use the label 'creative writing' for whatever's left, we would easily complete the task this essay has undertaken, to place creative writing, once and for all, in its proper relation to literature and composition. Unfortunately, such an analysis will not render much useful information, beyond what we already know: that literature and composition, like creative writing, are separate fields of inquiry which address their problems in very different environments and by use of very different data. This statement of difference characterizes 'disciplinarity'. A discipline, from this perspective, is distinguished by what it construes as evidence, and its evidence further clarifies its epistemology. While there is no widely agreed-upon method for a study such as this one, I propose to study a teaching activity historically linked to creative writing, the workshop, and then to determine what its epistemological bases are. As a result, this study of the workshop shows both what creative writers might learn when literary and composition studies are used in a creative writing class but also in what ways literary and composition studies impede learning in a creative writing class. And this examination gives us the chance to further explore creative writing as a discipline. While I believe the connections scholars have made between creative writing and composition have been important and far-reaching, in the end I believe creative writing and composition are separate disciplines, discrete fields of inquiry. A study of the workshop as a method of instruction linked historically to creative writing, with emphasis on what it might profitably borrow from composition and literature and what it must reject, ought to lead us to some conclusions concerning the epistemology from which each discipline in English studies arises. An understanding of the starting points or foundations of creative writing will enable us to better examine the relations that characterize English studies. From this vantage point, then, creative writing is more than a hybrid of literary and composition studies; it is an autonomous field with a right to its own history, epistemology, and classroom activities. A study of the workshop, in particular, will more clearly enable us to see the disciplinary nature of creative writing.

Interpretation in the Workshop: The Literary Emphasis in Creative Writing Studies

For the purpose of exploring issues associated with the workshop method of instruction, I will use a definition forwarded by D.G. Myers (1996: 118) in the following statement from The Elephants Teach: 'The method of communal making and communal criticism is the workshop method' (my emphasis). Such an undertaking must invite participation from students, to be communal. Typically a workshop requires that the community take one of three actions, typifying pedagogical approaches: interpretation, evaluation, or a combination of the two. To make workshop truly communal, then, teachers must consciously prepare their students to perform the two tasks central to workshop: interpretation and evaluation. Creative writing's long association with literary study makes the act of interpretation a natural and even inevitable...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1847692680
• ISBN 13: 9781847692689
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 260
• Herausgeber: Donnelly Dianne
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland