CALL FOR PAPERS
RMIT University, Melbourne, in conjunction with the Australian Association of Writing Programs, is pleased to announce the Australian Association of Writing Program’s 15th annual conference: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS or PERFECT PARTNERS – The role of literary studies in creative writing programs
25 – 27 November, 2010, Melbourne, Australia
The conference will examine the tensions between the studying of literature in university creative writing programs and the manner in which literary studies informs or is ignored by creative writing pedagogies. What are the implications for both discipline areas and what new developments might shape future writing and literary curriculum?
BACKGROUND
Literary studies advocates have long argued that writing programs have contributed to the decline in literary studies. Creative writing teachers and others have responded by noting the different ways in which literary studies engage within creative writing programs, offering more forensic readings which examine texts differently, not just as best practice examples to inform creative practice but through more varied and cross-disciplinary conversations with the cultural, social and industrial notions of writing. These tensions between the ‘creators’ and the ‘critics’, between product and process, continue to engage academics, most notably in the ways in which they design their teaching, facilitate their students’ approaches to texts or their own creative or critical research outcomes and fields. Through such debates the role of national literatures is also contested. How, for example, might writing programs engage with questions of nationhood? Such debates about national literatures within the academy highlight different approaches to identity and nation. What might these developments mean for the ways in which writing teachers approach their current programs and just how might wider global issues about writing and literary studies shape the future?
The conference aims to establish a dialogue between writing and literary studies with a view to exploring new directions in the teaching, researching and public place of both disciplines.
Papers are sought on the following themes:
- Exploring the nexus between creative writing and literary studies
- New approaches to creative writing and literary studies within the academy
- The product of writing versus the process of writing
- The critic and creative writing within the academy
- New media, technology and computer-based learning
- Locating creative writing in new research directions (such as practice-led research, and ERA and RAE evaluations)
- Voice, identity and agency within literary and creative writing studies
- The possibility of “creative reading” and the teaching of “reading” as a new pedagogy
- Indigenous writers and writing
- Re-examining ‘the canon’
- New media, technology and computer-based writing, reading and learning
- National literatures - inclusion or new imperialism?
- Higher degree research directions in creative writing and/or literary studies
- Issues in the supervision and/or examination of higher degree research in creative writing and literary studies
- Writing and literature in festivals, events and cultural tourism
- Any other appropriate conference-related topic
WEBSITE
A conference website will be established by 1 March 2010. The site will contain a mechanism for the submission of abstracts and full papers for refereeing. In the meantime please address all enquiries to
Professor Catherine Cole, Professor of Creative Writing and Discipline Head, Writing and Communication, RMIT by email to Catherine.cole@rmit.edu.au
PUBLICATIONS
Publication of conference proceedings (Refereed Articles) will be on the ‘Publications’ part of the AAWP website http://www.aawp.org.au/publications-aawp
ABSTRACTS
Refereed Stream: 24 May
All potential contributors to refereed stream, please note that refereed papers will make a distinctive contribution that extends the current scholarly literature in the field. Refereed papers will draw on a sound framework of methodology and scholarship relevant to the paper’s topic, rather than personal experience and/or anecdotal evidence only. Papers will be refereed in these terms as well as along the conference themes.
- Acceptance of abstracts notified by 25 June 2010
- (abstracts not accepted into refereed stream will be considered for the general stream)
- For abstracts accepted, full papers (max. of 3,500 words) required by 23 August 2010, must be formatted according to style guidelines (attached)
- Double blind refereeing of full papers, acceptance or not, plus referees comments returned to authors by 1 October
- Full papers not accepted will appear in the general stream of the conference
- Final formatted papers due 7 December for 2010 publication
General Stream (non refereed): 25 June 2010.
Notification of acceptance by 23 July 2010
Professor Catherine Cole
Discipline Head, Writing and Communication
Professor of Creative Writing
School of Media and Communication
RMIT, Level 3, Bld 36, 393 Swanston Street
Melbourne, Victoria, 3000 61 03 99253714
www.catherinecole.com.au