Writing and Researching (in) the Regions – A TEXT Special Issue

Editors: Dr Nike Sulway, Dr Lynda Hawryluk, Dr Moya Costello

The Australian Regional University Network (RUN) asserts that their member universities (and, by implication, regional universities more generally), ‘play an important and distinctive role in advancing Australia’s national prosperity, productivity and identity.’ Internationally, Hartley (2014 http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10368) identifies, in a special issue of the European Journal of American Studies devoted to regionalism in North America, that ‘[s]ince the 1990s [there has been] a surge of interest in the local, the regional, the global, and their intersections’.

This special issue of TEXT will focus on exploring the ways in which creative-writing teaching, research and practice in regional settings have particular flavours and concerns. The editors strongly urge writers and researchers from the regions to reflect on the particularities of their teaching, research and writing experiences and contexts.

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following questions/themes:
• What narratives, stories, or voices ‘naturally’ arise in regional research and writing practices? What stories about the regions are acceptable to the largely urban publishing industry?

• How do perceptions of regionality impact on the ways regional writing, teaching and/or research are funded, framed, or received inside and outside the regions?

• What negotiations or relationships exist between regional and non-regional writers and writing researchers?

• Is the global-local nexus naturalised and unproblematic?

• Do those of us who teach in a region, outside of a large city, inevitably do a comparison with our collegial city counterparts? Do students make such a comparison?

• What characterises academic life for both academic and student in a regional university?

• Are there particular challenges or advantages in researching, teaching, supervising and studying in regions? Are there issues that academics must address specifically in undergraduate teaching through a perceived or real lack of access to resources in a regional context?

• Are regional students from a very different profile to their urban counterparts? And if so, what does this mean?

• In what ways do researchers and writers embrace or reject regional identities?

For more information and how to submit, click here.