Abriana Jetté, "Making Meaning: Authority, Authorship, and the Introduction to Creative Writing Syllabus" (6.1)

ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES
6.1

Abriana Jetté

Making Meaning:
Authority, Authorship, and the Introduction to
Creative Writing Syllabus

Introduction

The phrase “creative writing studies” appeared in the 2009 special issue of College English dedicated to exploring creative writing at the college level. In his article, “One Simple Word: From Creative Writing to Creative Writing Studies,” Timothy Mayers differentiates creative writing from creative writing studies by describing creative writing as “the academic enterprise of hiring successful writers to teach college-level creative writing courses,” and creative writing studies as “a field of scholarly inquiry and research that has three main strands: pedagogical, historical, and advocacy-oriented” (Mayers 218). According to Mayers, creative writing studies embraces theory and interdisciplinary collaboration, especially in connection with composition studies. Mayers also suggests that creative writing studies can offer a break from workshop pedagogy in the creative writing classroom, for, as scholars like Joseph Moxley and Wendy Bishop asserted before him, workshop pedagogy is neither the best, nor is it the only teaching practice available for the course.

Within the margins of the “Comments & Responses” section of the preceding issue of College English, Anna Leahy and Catherine Brady expressed fears that “One Simple Word” misrepresented the creative writing at the college level, and their concerns sparked a continuing discussion on traditions and pedagogies associated with creative writing and creative writing programs. Decades ago, a popular debate surrounding creative writing pedagogy was whether or not writing could be taught. Some instructors thought (and still think) that a writer is born a writer. In some ways, that argument has fallen out of fashion, and the new style of questioning probes not whether writing can be taught, but how instructors go about teaching it. “One Simple Word” claimed that workshop pedagogy dominated creative writing courses; Catherine Brady alleged otherwise. If conversations on the craft and teaching of creative writing have evolved so tremendously over the past decade, how has our teaching represented these changes?

Current conversations surrounding creative writing studies appeal to interdisciplinary, multimodal, and multigenre teaching methods and student outcomes. Adam Koehler advocates for a stronger incorporation of the digital humanities, Timothy Mayers pushes against the anti-intellectual identity of creative writing courses, and Anna Leahy promotes the possibilities of fashioning a department comprised of individual scholars from different fields—neurology, psychology, fashion, linguistics, and so on. These new theories suggest that creative writing is welcome to multiple pedagogies. Do introduction to creative writing course syllabi work in tandem with the most recent scholarship?

In pursuit of an answer to the question of how students are introduced to creative writing at the college level, I investigated sixty introduction to creative writing syllabi from across the nation. In closely examining these syllabi, I looked to determine popular and/or alternative pedagogies, reading assignments, writing assignments, and assessment guidelines. My research confirmed that workshop pedagogy is the most popular form of teaching creative writing, with influences of its structure appearing in 60 out of 60 introduction to creative writing syllabi.

A hegemony exists when dominant features permeate a sense of authority and rightfulness, not by means of research by but means of persuasion. Operating as a hegemony, the workshop tradition controls creative writing pedagogy. Instructors and students have been convinced of the workshop’s power because that is the way they were taught. However, out of all of the classes offered in Liberal Arts, the introduction to creative writing course has the flexibility to move across disciplines, employ multiple forms of media, and offer a variety of processes towards writing. bell hooks’s theory of counterhegemonic practices conceded that in order for new ideas to happen, new spaces need to open for those ideas to live. Sticking oneself in the same place every day will create the same outcomes. The growth of creative writing at the college level is associated with the counterhegemonic theories and protests of the 1960’s and early 1970’s: antiwar demonstrations, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, civil rights protests, and the Second Wave women’s movement—all socially imperative moments that have altered the course of the American education system. In addition to the foundation of the Creative Writing Studies Organization, have contemporary movements like #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter prompted us to reconsider about how we introduce creative writing to our students?

Spotlight on Sixty: Methods and Strategies Used to Gather Data

My research began with emails to former colleagues, to my MFA cohort, to associates from my Master’s program, to peers in my PhD program, and to scholars who I met at various national conferences. I also posted to the private Facebook forum Creative Writing Pedagogy, organized and managed by creative writing studies scholar, poet, and professor, Anna Leahy. My post to the Facebook group explained that I was undergoing an investigation of introduction to creative writing course syllabi, and it asked members who were interested in participating in the study to send a former/current syllabus for the course to a specific Gmail account. A serendipitous component to my research would also reveal itself. At conferences, department meetings, poetry readings, or during private conversations, individual scholars, colleagues, and/or department chairs offered to send me their syllabi after discussing the conversation. If a course syllabus was offered, I openly accepted.

From these crowdsourcing methods, I sometimes received syllabi that were not for the introduction to creative writing course but for a creative writing course intended to focus on poetry or fiction or memoir writing. If the syllabus was not specifically for a multi-genre “Introduction to Creative Writing” course, it was not used for this research.

I also browsed free and/or accessible content from particular university internet managing systems, and I also visited university websites, scholarconnect webpages, Digication webpages, personal webpages from instructors, and also looked at websites like coursehero.com, where PDFs of syllabi may be uploaded by former students. In the cases of Canvas or Digication, I often needed a particular log-in or username connected to the university, which I did not have. There are some universities, like Stonybrook University, which allow public access to course syllabi. There are some universities that keep what happens in their classrooms under strict lock and key, or at least university username and password.

In this online pursuit, the most helpful route was an extensive Google search. These syllabi, available with open access, seem imperative in recognizing the public perception of the introduction to creative writing course. Syllabi accessed without much difficulty are the syllabi many incoming students might encounter on their own. For instance, if students interested in creative writing at the college level Googled “creative writing syllabus” or “introduction to creative writing college,” what might they discover? I alternated phrasing from introduction to creative writing, studying creative writing, creative writing in college, bachelors in creative writing, creative writing syllabus, introduction to creative writing syllabus, and creative writing degree to ensure that the algorithms that run the internet infrastructure offered me different material.

Collecting introduction to creative writing syllabi that ensured a variety of structure, my survey includes courses conducted online, face-to-face, and during the summer, winter, spring, and fall sessions of the academic year. In addition, I set a three-syllabi-maximum per institution, not wanting the philosophies of a particular program to offset the balance of this data. The institutions from which the introduction to creative writing courses were taught also varied between community colleges, city-funded and/or state-funded public universities, universities included in the Ivy League system, and other private institutions. Some programs offered Associates degrees, while others offered BFAs. This type of breadth was necessary in order to discern if the pedagogical techniques used in the creative writing course varied depending upon budget, department, student background, or any other institutional factors.

Finally, these syllabi span over a decade. I sought this type of representation to note any differences that might have influenced creative writing pedagogy since Mayer’s 2009 article and the establishment of the Creative Writing Studies Organization in 2016. Three out of sixty syllabi did not include an exact term. The most recent set of syllabi used for this research derives from courses taught during the Fall 2018 semester. (See Appendix for full list of represented syllabi.)

The results of my research have pressed me to reconsider my own definition of creative writing.

The Pleasure Principle:
Rhetorical Promises and the Introduction to Creative Writing Syllabus

In his essay “What’s Creative about Creative Writing? Critical Pedagogy and Transversal Creativity” Erick Piller discusses the need for a common definition or a “shared understanding of creativity” (Piller 1). Einstein believed creativity was intelligence having fun, and this open definition works best when considering the interdisciplinary potentials of creative writing studies. Within his essay, Piller wants scholars of creative writing studies to “interrogate the meanings and possibilities of creativity in the educational contexts of creative writing,” turning to theories of transversal creativity, which promote “agency and self-invention through a realized meshing between established discourses and identities, ways of speaking, writing, thinking, and being” (Piller 2) as a method of such interrogation. In other words, students of creative writing should energize the varying aspects of their identities throughout the semester. This idea is represented on the introduction to creating writing course syllabi in what I came to call “the pleasure principle.”

The first sentence on a syllabus for an introduction to creative writing course found at the University of Pennsylvania reads: “This workshop-style class is an introduction to the pleasures of the writing process.” The fourteen-word arrangement demonstrates two major assumptions regarding the introduction to creative writing course: that it is a workshop course, and that it is/should be pleasurable. The course description continues to explain how students will “spend half the semester writing fiction and the other half writing poems.” Just as its first sentence echoed the common misconception regarding anti-intellectualism and the creative writing course, the second sentence, describing the dichotomization of literary forms throughout specific weeks of the semester, advances the popular assumption that creative writing at the college level means writing fiction and poetry.

It is not rare to find rhetoric that insists on the environment of the introduction to creative writing class as a fun, pleasant, quasi-therapeutic experience. It’s no surprise: creative writing instructors encourage self-inspection and reflection. It would be hard to sell such goals to students by describing them as painstakingly arduous and unpleasant. To motivate participation, attendance, and genuine student-interest, 23% of syllabi insinuate that the introduction to creative writing course will be enjoyable.

To illustrate, consider a syllabus from New York University, which images the “cool and relaxed discussion” students will experience, afterwards being able to “walk away with a clearer image of who you are as a writer.” At the University of Texas, Dallas, students are told to expect a “fun, supportive, and productive class atmosphere” while a course description at Chesapeake College ends with the instructor “hoping” the students will find the course “rewarding and challenging” and “inspiring,” and that students will be “more introspective” and more “daring” by the time the class is over. A course at Trinity College claims “to speak simply: writing is pleasant.”

With 14 out of 60 syllabi directly describing creative writing as “good,” “pleasurable,” “enjoyable,” or “fun,” a course at Rutgers University goes so far as to list the goal “have fun” as a final objective for the course. However, a majority of syllabi avoid establishing rhetoric aimed at creating atmospheres of pleasure. A course at the Maryland Institute College of Art specifies how the second half of the course involves an “in depth independent research and writing project with an optional visual component” and adds that the class is “high-intensity.” Similarly, a course offered at Illinois State University details the work expected of students in the class as “labor intensive and challenging.” An introduction to creative writing course offered through the global program, Semester at Sea, details “23 class periods” with “selections from seven books.” Further, an introduction to creative writing course at the University of Kansas explains how students will “be immersed in contemporary and iconic work, voracious, close reading…,” while a course at Indianapolis University explains the extensive workload students will have in a clear and simple manner: “In this course, you’re going to write and read a lot.” Following this tone, an online course offered at The University of South Dakota informs students that to be successful in the class they will be “reading and writing on a tight schedule.”

An online class at Linfield College approaches the discrepancy between enjoyable and scholastic tones in the creative writing course by explaining that “while creative work should be engaging, fun, and even wildly inventive, this course shouldn’t be taken lightly. It will not be the place for and [sic] ‘easy A.’ and work will require hard thinking, articulation, self-reflection, and the courage to fail and try again.” Describing writing as “wildly inventive” reads as slightly ironic considering the limits students will have with their writing. The creative writing student has limits. Student inventiveness, as I discovered, is restricted to particular literary forms.

Divide and Conquer:
Literary Genre and the Introduction to Creative Writing Course

Students in the introduction to creative writing course do not just write what they want to write. 86% of introduction to creative writing syllabi require students to read/write in fiction; 83% of courses require students to read and/or write poetry; 53% of courses require students to read/write creative nonfiction; and 18% of introduction to creative writing courses include the reading/writing of drama (Figure 1).

To break this data down further, 36% described the course by mentioning the writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction; 25% as writing in fiction and poetry; 8.3% as writing in fiction, poetry, and drama; 10% as writing in fiction, poetry, creative-nonfiction, and drama; 3.3% introduced students to creative writing through only the craft of poetry; 3.3% described creative writing as writing in fiction or nonfiction; 5% introduced creative writing to students only through fiction, and 3.3% turned only to creative-nonfiction to introduce students to creative writing. Out of sixty syllabi, 5% resisted describing creative writing through a specific literary form (Figure 2).

To summarize: out of sixty syllabi, 95% use literary genres to describe or define the course (Figure 3). At Virginia Tech, a syllabus for an introduction to creative writing course describes “the core of this class” as “the craft of poetry, creative-non-fiction, and fiction,” and a syllabus for the introduction to creative writing class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee informs students that “the first half of the semester we will focus on fiction (short stories and flash fiction), while the second half will be dedicated to poetry.” Following suit, a course description for San Diego State University introduces students to “the theory and practice of poetry and fiction with emphasis on the basic concepts and techniques used in these forms.”

Fiction and poetry also fall under strict definitions. At Penn State, a fictional story and a memoir are both required to be “between 1500-3000 words.” Similarly, at San Jose University, a piece of fiction is described as “a short story, either first- or third person, of approximately 2000 words—7-10 double-spaced pages” while poems are mandated to be “14-30 lines in length” and must fall under the categories of “a self-portrait poem / a poem containing sensory images and concrete details / a brief narrative (story) poem / and a Shakespearean sonnet.” At Colorado State University poems are expected to be “free verse poems that were begun in class in response to in-class exercises.”

5% of introduction to creative writing syllabi resist defining the creative writing course through the use of a literary genre in this way. A course description mirroring such resistance can be found at Illinois State University, which explains that students will “learn various skills and techniques creative writers use to develop a sustainable practice of writing in the contemporary field. As a community, we will learn a great deal about each other by writing across various modes of art-in-language and describing how our writing works and what it does through various methods centering on close examination of language.” In a similar light, an introduction to creative writing course offered at Holyoke Community College details the design of class as an introduction to “the forms, strategies, and techniques involved in creative writing.” A course description at The University of Texas-Dallas turns for the less is more approach, stating that students will be introduced to “the college-level study of creative writing (multiple genres).”

Even when syllabi avoid defining the creative writing course through the participation of reading and writing in fiction and/or poetry, these genres are still present on the schedule of assignments. Fiction and poetry have a permanent space in the creative writing course. Other forms of writing, like drama, screenwriting, and even creative nonfiction, never occupy an entire semester and are not consistently represented; creative nonfiction appears as a required reading/writing requirement on barely more than half of syllabi. The popularity of fiction and poetry in the introduction to creative writing classroom results in a lack of multimodal, mixed, and hybrid creative genres. The research thus far is clear: the edifice of the creative writing classroom relies not only on fiction and poetry, but also on workshop pedagogy.

Not Can it Be Taught, but How: An Examination of Workshop Pedagogy

My research determines that the introduction to creative writing course almost always includes works of fiction and poetry. In comparison, consider the 5% of syllabi that distinctly state the instructor’s intention to teach creative writing. Rather than claiming to “teach,” popular verb phrases used to describe the purpose of the introduction to creative writing course include but are not limited to “identify and appreciate” (University of Texas-Dallas), “become familiar with” (University of Kansas”), “read,” “write,” and “revise” (University of California-Los Angeles), “help students develop” (“Stephen F. Austin State University), and “look at” (University of Pennsylvania) works of literature (fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction).

Standing out in the crowd are three syllabi taught by different instructors through different semesters, each hailing from Trinity Washington University, D.C. These syllabi crystallize the instructors’ intentions to teach creative writing by stating: “To take a creative writing course assumes, first, that writing can be taught. (It can).” In two fairly simple syntactical constructions, the instructor of the creative writing course at Trinity University settles the debate. Writing can be taught. How is this course, fairly unique course taught? According to the syllabus, with a little help from workshop pedagogy.

60 out of 60 syllabi include components of workshop pedagogy in the course. That is, every single syllabus made reference to a workshop. A product-centered style of teaching credited to the Breadloaf Writers Conference and the University of Iowa, workshop pedagogy may vary from instructor to instructor, but is broadly understood as student work to be discussed and critiqued by a class of peers; the biggest difference surrounds the student-writer’s freedom to speak during the workshop conversation. In 2009, “Theorizing Craft: The Voice of Authority” by Rosalie Morales Kearns discussed the elements plaguing workshop pedagogy, specifically those of (1) power dynamics, (2) the gag-rule, (3) the fault-finding mode, and (4) normativity.

From my observations of sixty syllabi, I noted these three distinct styles of workshop pedagogy: (1) traditional, (2) basic, and (3) markedly different. My definition of basic workshop pedagogy details a class that requires both published and unpublished work as part of its methods to get students to “share and comment” on stories and poems. Traditional workshop pedagogy refers to a course in which the methods of reading and writing are based off of student writing/unpublished work. The course is modeled off of the discussion and critiquing of this unpublished work with heavy emphasis on peer criticism and student-writer revision. A course labeled as markedly different limits workshop discussions to 3 or fewer weeks throughout the semester, typically the last few weeks as detailed on the schedule of assignments. 13 out of 60 (22%) syllabi viewed for this survey turned to traditional Iowa-style workshop pedagogy (Figure 4). 41 out of 60 (66%) syllabi turned to the use of basic workshop pedagogy in the introduction to creative writing classroom, making it the most popular style of instruction.

What this constitutes is incredibly nebulous. 66.6% of syllabi neglect to explain the goal of the workshop or the requirements of the workshop on the introduction to creative writing syllabus, even though the idea of the workshop is mentioned as part of the grading criteria and/or detailed in the schedule of assignments. 33.3% of syllabi create a space specifically for describing the workshop. Of this designated section, 5% attempt explain what a workshop “is”; the other 28% explain the rules that students must follow within the workshop atmosphere. That is, they offer guidelines on the workshop (Figure 5).

A course offered at the University of Texas-Dallas does not necessarily define what the workshop is, but how the workshop works. The syllabus guides students to “make sure the instructor and each student in the class has one copy…[and that]…students are expected to provide written comments on each other’s work in advance, and join in class discussion in insightful and respectful ways…” At times, a discussion on the workshop appears to happen in the classroom, as is the case for an introduction to creative writing course at Virginia Tech states that the discussion of the “mechanisms of workshop” will be discussed “in more detail in class.” Additionally, the syllabus from Chesapeake College illustrates how a “writing workshop is a place where writers gather with the specific goal of not only bettering their own work, but also helping other participants to do so as well,” which implies that workshops are not used to jumpstart the creative process, but to “better” or improve one’s work—though, to whose standards is not articulated.

To contrast, a syllabus for a course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee asks students to “think of our classroom as an artist’s studio. We will write, rewrite, collaborate, discuss, and build.” From the language in this statement, we can assume that students will be making, even building, work within the classroom, sometimes with one another, sometimes individually. The use of the verb “build” suggests that the workshop is not for improvement, rather it is a facilitator towards creation. A syllabus for a course assigned at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology explains how “a vital, ongoing intellectual conversation- about our writing and that of published authors-is at the heart of the course,” and that “the writing workshop—in which students respond to their peers’ works-in-progress is a very important part” of that process. The course at MIT structures the idea of the workshop around a work-in-progress; in return, this opens up the possibilities of what might be brought in. The conversation is stated to be fluid, so it seems unlikely that students will be made to feel that their work must be finished, corrected, or perfected before it is shared.

In instances when there was no separate section to describe the workshop, the syllabus indicated the use of workshop either through assessment guidelines or the schedule of assignments. For example, though the syllabus lacked a description of what students were required to do within the workshop and a description of what the goals of a workshop might be, the schedule of assignments for an introduction to creative writing course found at Oakton Community College lists “Writing Workshop” from Week 11 to Week 16.

More often than not, descriptions of the workshop are simply rules on how to earn the best grade in the course. To better elaborate, consider the two-pages dedicated to informing students as to what they must do in order to succeed in the workshop setting, as detailed on a syllabus from Indianapolis State University. Students are given three rules: “1.) Write comments in the margins of stories up for discussion. You MUST use the comments feature in Microsoft Word”). The first requirement continues to articulate that all comments will be “transparent to the entire class,” and reminds students that they should never “FORGET TO BRING A PRINT OUT OF THE STORY IN QUESTION TO CLASS.”

In addition to the notes composed in the marginalia, students are required to “write a 300-500 word critique for each peer written story” and to finish with a “prescription, a section where you point out very specific things that still needs work within the story. Go beyond grammar.” The final step towards success in the course is to post these critiques online, “to Ace by 12am the night before workshop” and to “name your thread on Ace after your favorite line of the story in question” (Workshop, Indianapolis State University.) Here, student-writers in the introductory course are told to act like experts—like doctors—a write prescriptions for their peer’s works-in-progress.

The syllabus for an introduction to creative writing course offered at Cabrillo College divides workshops into three sections, which was unique among the body of data: a Rough Draft Workshop, Second Draft Workshop, and Polished Draft Workshop. The rough draft workshop provides “an opportunity to get feedback on a piece of writing that feels rough to you, one that you are just beginning to work on,” while the second draft workshop serves as an “opportunity to get feedback on a piece that you are in the middle of working on…time to concentrate on character motivation, pacing, plot development and point of view.” Polished Draft Workshops are noted as the time for very specific questions about a piece the student is “ready to send out into the world.” These three divisions of the workshop make the course appear as primarily student-focused. It also seems to tell students to dedicate an expansive amount of time to writing one particular piece throughout the semester.

Student participation is another common requirement of workshop pedagogy grading. The University of New Orleans offers students an expanded description of workshop requirements centered around student participation. It explains that “writers should come to class with a spirit of humility and an eagerness to improve their writing,” that “the writer should listen attentively and write down helpful notes.” Amongst other criteria, the instructor warns students that “comments should be descriptive rather than evaluative.” Introduction to creative writing students at Dixie State College “actively participate in workshop, which means more than showing up. Workshop participation includes actively reading your classmate’s work, listening to and building on your classmate’s comments, and keeping up with the discussion.” This syllabus also explains that as part of the workshop, students take on the identity of “reader,” “writer,” and “editor.” Students are expected to “provide a generous amount of marginal comments (line by line and paragraph by paragraph) and significant summary comments (recasting your view) of your classmate’s work.” Notably, the student writer disappears, inactive and unmentioned, within these descriptions.

Workshop is not just about peer discussions, but also about individual responses. Written feedback between peers remains a steady component to the workshop and is sometimes used as a means of assessment. An introduction to creative writing course offered at the University of California, Los Angeles, explains in its workshop section that “for each piece being workshopped, you will write 150 words,” while a course found at New York University takes the time to explain that in addition to “advanced copies of your workshop piece” being distributed “exactly one week before your workshop date,” students should engage in “writing letter responses to your peers’ workshop pieces as part of your participation grade.” Two copies of this response are due, one which will be given to the student whose piece is being workshopped, the other handed to the instructor.

Authority, Authorship, & Alternatives

In thinking about the multiple forms of communication and making that students experiment with every day, as well as considering the rhetoric of the pleasure principle, what might students expect to experience when entering a course that describes itself as “wildly inventive?” Will students experiment with mixed media? Listen to music? Use their bodies and their voices as tools of craft? Will there be various opportunities for creative writing students to connect with their peers? With faculty? With established, visiting writers? Perhaps one might expect a syllabus or schedule of assignments that boasts descriptions of “fun” and “pleasure” to deviate from the standard, to remix, to rethink, and/or to reuse language in multiple mediums and ways. Perhaps a syllabus that offers more than the standard reading and writing of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction might fall under the definition of “fun” for some students.

Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing suggests steering away from language that pontificates about such ineffable qualities of the writing process. When creative writing students are described as “explorers” or “ground-breakers, the focus…maintains that creative writing” is taught as “liberation from the constraints of everyday life” (Goldsmith 7). Goldsmith suggests appealing to contemporary students by asking them to use of what they are already familiar with, what they have access to on a daily basis. Rather than teach students the popular forms of creative writing—the production of primarily fiction and poetry, as the research thus far has shown—Goldsmith argues for the incorporation of writing that is “uncreative.” Thinking against the assumption that creative writing is the art of writing in fiction and in poetry, Goldsmith encourages pedagogical exercises like asking students listen to the radio and push around, squish together, and separate the language of traffic reports and weather updates as alternatives to composing a standard 5-7 page short story. Goldsmith supports the use of dictation, memorization, and collage. Student writers needn’t be “explorers” searching for words: the words are in front of them. What can they do with what they already have?

Tim Mayers champions for an exploration of craft criticism, which “attempts to situate the writing of poetry and fiction, and the teaching of poetry and fiction writing, within institutional, political, social, and economic contexts” (Mayers 33). In short, craft criticism is “engaged theorizing about creative production” (Mayers 46). A main area of inquiry for craft criticism concerns itself with authorship and authority in the creative writing classroom. According to Mayers, considerations of authorship ask how the introduction to creative writing course can perpetuate assumptions that a student must already enter the class with some intrinsic talent. Through the demands, guidelines, and requirements found in this research, it’s clear that the introduction to creative writing workshop maintains that the student-writer knows the least about what to do in order to make original works-in-progress successful.

However, the opportunities for any of the above described creative experiments are far and few in between according to these sixty syllabi. Only three out of sixty syllabi assigned work that did not fall under the requirements of a literary genre. As an example, a course taught at NYU dedicated one class period towards the end of the semester to discussing “Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, and Logic” according to the schedule of assignments. Bob Dylan was also mentioned as the topic of discussion for the previous class. On the schedule of assignments found for a course at Hunter College, students are asked to “mute a television show” they have never seen “and write the dialogue” as a homework assignment one week.

What sort of authority do introductory students have over their ideas? Could a student create a Youtube video, a series of MEMES, manga, animé, a collage, a musical composition, a dance, or an interactive display? According to my research, there would be little opportunity to make such creations, especially when considering the required assignments needed to pass the course like the writing of a poem, a short story, and reading responses. During a previous semester, a student created a boardgame to tell the story of his education; the effort was so that he created his own figurines, player cards, and color coordination; it was so that he not only wanted to show off his creation, he wanted to play it, repeatedly.

Introduction to creative writing syllabi maintain that it is not just the content of writing, but the ability to adhere to guidelines that make a student-writer successful. They also suggest that formatting creative work entails a similar process as formatting academic work. Inadvertently, these demands control what the student says and how the student thinks, and seem especially problematic when influencing student grades, as is the case at the University of Texas at El Paso where students are responsible for leading workshop discussions. This discussion makes for well up to half of their final grade.

To help guide this discussion, students are given an example of what a successful commentary on a piece of writing might look like: “The setting of this poem suggests the speaker’s inner landscape of depression and grief over the loss of her lover and hoped-for husband. For example, the image of the willow, ‘its branches drooping and swaying / like the hair of drowning children,’ suggests the speaker’s feeling of drowning in grief…” After reading this example, students might be under the impression that all poems must have settings, or willow trees, or lovers, or be about grief. The instructor’s example creates a narrow view for students regarding what they may think they are allowed (or not allowed) to comment on and how they are allowed to sound. The verb “suggest” is used twice, which further limits what active language students might consider when talking about peer work. The instructor’s intent is to prepare students for what is deemed acceptable commentary, and I appreciate the ambition to model this type of response; however, the forced rhetoric of the example complies with the conventions and academic tone of Standard American English, insinuating that students must sound a particular way in order to earn success.

With the 2018 publication of David Mura’s The Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing, and other critical discussions about silencing writers of color in the creative writing classroom, a further probe into what is read, what is written, and what is said by students and instructors seems imperative, particularly because 22% of syllabi specifically state that students must adhere to MLA format when writing a piece for the workshop. From this percentage, I assume that 22% of syllabi value Standard Academic English (SAE) in the classroom. As an example, consider how Mura recounts the “specialized talk” David Foster Wallace would repeat to students of color whose pieces were written in alternatives to SEA, which Mura and Wallace refer to as “Standard White English.” Wallace, who taught at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, had pre-conceived notions regarding the diversity of literary voice. According to Mura, Wallace would explain that students of color were “basically studying a foreign dialect. This dialect is called Standard White English…. In this country SWE is perceived as the dialect of education and intelligence and power and prestige, and anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE” (Mura 6). Wallace argued that writers of color like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin utilize SWE to their best efforts, and he attributes their global success to their ability to write “ass-kicking” SWE. Mura criticizes the privilege rampant in Wallace’s “truth,” which functions on the assumptions that SWE is preeminent as a “sociological, political and cultural fact” (Mura 7). Further, not only does Wallace’s claim insist that his student of color have never encountered SWE before (he refers to it as a “foreign dialect”), he ignores the existence of any narrative ever written that does not satisfy his definition of literary voice. Writers like Una Marson or Zora Neale Hurston seem not even to cross Wallace’s peripherals.

Matthew Salessas (“‘The Reader’ Vs POC: Time to Rethink the Writing Workshop”) and Beth Nguyen (“Unsilencing the Writing Workshop”) have confided about their own unsatisfactory workshop experiences. Salessas discloses that he was told flat-out not to experiment with hybrid forms and multiple languages as an MFA student, while Nguyen remembers a particular course that required her, the student-writer, to be silent as her peers turned their attention away from the writing and on to the curious case of dim-sum. Never having heard of it before, the workshop consisted of students wondering what dim-sum could be, and their inability to figure it out, distracted them from focusing on anything else in the story. There was no intervention by the instructor to explain the globally loved eating experience. Such descriptions are not rare for writers of color to report after a workshop.

Prestigious national residencies, like the Breadloaf Writers Conference, have also been criticized for participating in daily micro-aggressions and sexual harassment under the guise of tradition and selectivity, defending the acts as efforts to find “the best talent.” Jean Ho, a fiction writer, reported to VIDA on such traditions based off of her experiences as a waiter at the conference (those who ask for financial support to attend Breadloaf are awarded funding in exchange for their time to serve the faculty and students). Ho describes the “mythos of the conference…how competitive it is to get in…” (Ho 1), and the disappointment she felt after a few days there: she was overworked, unnoticed, and underappreciated. Anecdotes from Ho’s residency include being asked to change her name for a night to entertain dinner guests, witnessing faculty members walk up to writers of color and asking to touch their hair, confusing the few writers of color in attendance with one another, and many other cringe-worthy moments. We expect our writers, our so-called pioneers of multiple voices and experiences, to know better. When Ho went public with her experiences, many were quick to point out that Breadloaf itself wasn’t the major problem, rather, the issue lie with “the institutional white supremacy of our industry as a whole” (Ho 3).

The journey of American creative writing in the academy begins simultaneously with workshop pedagogy. An institution can by synonymous with a tradition, and while I am focusing mostly on creative writing pedagogy within the introduction to creative writing course, it seems necessary to point out that the writers often brought into the writing classroom are seldom emerging but emerged. According to Jed Rasula, “race and class clearly play a major role” in the ranking of poets, but so does “educational privilege… ‘accidents’ as timing and acquaintances” (Rasula 439). According to my research, the authors and readings required of students have been published widely enough to gain some type of national recognition.

Perhaps the writers who appear on course syllabi have been championed by national programs like Poets & Writers and The American Academy of Poets, which were created to assist the careers of emerging and established writers. Assumed by many to be one of the most influential organizations in regards to its efforts to “keep poetry alive” in America (they sponsor Poetry Month, amongst other national events), grants from the American Academy of Poets can push an emerging poet into a nationally recognized prize-winning voice. Or, perhaps, the poets were noted, reviewed, published, or featured in “such review organs as The New York Times, Atlantic, and The New Yorker,” which may offer the impression that poetry serves a “strictly symbolic role, as an icon of high cultural legacy which ‘we’ cannot do without” (Rasula 468). Like the University system at large, these organizations have been complicit in promoting the idea that successful writing should sound a certain way (SAE), look a certain way (printed on the page), and be experienced in a certain way (read from the page). We can extrapolate the same to other genres taught in introduction to creative writing courses, particularly among “writers behaving badly,” a problem compounded when those writers are some of the few represented writers of color on a syllabus.

When both the sample responses and the acceptable writing style required of students are composed in SAE, an inadvertent valuing of particular dialects and languages appears, alienating communities of students who often already feel marginalized. The dominance of SAE in the introduction to creative writing classroom results in a devaluing of other worthy, lively, and dynamic narratives and assignments. These issues derive from the origin of workshop pedagogy as a “bootcamp” for writers, as it was described by Paul Engle. Inherited within the pedagogy are complications of power dynamics, authority, authorship, and this can often be recognized by a lack the lack of multimodal and diverse narratives and voices. Out of sixty introduction to creative writing course syllabi, only one required students to purchase and read an individual book written a writer of color.

Allow me to clarify. The most popular required text in the introduction to creative writing course is the creative writing anthology (Figure 6). Within these anthologies, works by writers of color appear. However, none of the required anthologies featured on the sixty introduction to creative writing syllabi used for this survey included an editor that identifies as a writer of color. Hand Dance, a collection of poetry by Wanda Coleman, was the only book written by a writer of color that students were required to purchase and read. So, while students in the introduction to creative writing course encounter works like “jasper texas 1998” & “to my last period” by Lucille Clifton; “Cookie Monster to First Lady Michelle Obama” by Nikki Herd, “Handymen,” and “The Change” by Cornelius Eady; “Siblings” by Patricia Smith, longer works like How it Went Down, by Kekla Magoon; Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie; and One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez are either excerpted from or appear on recommended lists, not required for students to purchase. The names of twenty-seven writers-of-color appear across sixty introduction to creative writing syllabi.

To solve issues of voice and representation, some argue for “allowing” student-writers to speak during the workshop discussion. In response to the gag-rule, the silent workshop asks the student-writer to keep quiet. As a result, workshops become less of a discussion about the progress and future of the piece and more of an editing session. It is an idea central to Local Assays, Dave Smith asks us: “Doesn’t it seem a bit unnatural to begin a workshop of college students by immediately throwing their poems into a public scrutiny and asking that public for a response?” While giving student-writer’s freedom to speak is a start, I argue that a greater we reconsider of our definition of creative writing, including the goals and objectives of workshop pedagogy.

Conclusion: Making Meaning:
Looking Towards the Future of Creative Writing Studies

Who is to say if workshop pedagogy will fall completely out of fashion, or if future scholars of creative writing studies will find a way to merge workshop, craft, theory, and advocacy into a semester that encourages student-driven thought, process, and production. Creative writing studies thrives off of new information and the act of connecting that knowledge with previously learned ideas or theories. While some scholars argue for in-house cross-pollination between English, Composition and Rhetoric, and Creative Writing programs, other scholars suggest the need for an interdisciplinary approach. To consider alternative teaching methods, we might look towards advancements in the digital and medical humanities.

At Columbia University’s School of Medicine, medical students are required to take classes in Narrative Medicine and Poetry Writing as part of their degree. Owen Lewis, M.d., a psychologist, poet, and Professor of poetry in the Department of Psychology, teaches a six-week intensive poetry course to medical students, and described the course on the panel “Teaching Creative Writing at the College Level” at the 23rd annual ALSCW conference. While Dr. Lewis’s personal goal for the course was to get medical students to recognize that poetry is all around, he discussed how the end-goal for requiring Medical Students to take these courses is not just to churn out well-educated doctors, but to ensure that young doctors in training are equipped with the experience of accessing ranges of empathy. Dr. Lewis argued that he would rather a doctor who personally connected with him as a patient rather than one who simply checked symptoms off of a list, and he wondered if anyone would disagree. Additionally, as of this writing, Dr. Colleen Farrell, an internal medicine resident at NYU/Bellevue, hosts a weekly medical humanities chat on Twitter (@MedHumChat) for writers and medical professionals to discuss a work of creative writing. Considering other modes of discussion, and how technology might play into emerging pedagogies, might be a path forward.

Perhaps these young-doctors-and-writers-in-training might develop our insights and research into the science of creativity, a notion creative writing studies scholar Dianne Donnelly’s prompts readers to explore in “The Convergence of Creative Writing Processes and Their Neurological Mapping,” featured in Graeme Harper’s Changing Creative Writing in America: Strengths, Weaknesses, Possibilities (Multilingual Matters 2017). Donnelly navigates neurological mapping to discuss the “integration and convergence of creative processes.” Ruminating over the neurological activity that occurs when something deeply encroached in our psyche occupies our thinking, Donnelly wondered if we might find a “theme” that continuously appears and influences our motivations. If so, what happens to our brain we think about that “theme”? What happens when the brain is “on” creativity?

While neuroimaging is still being conducted that will help guide scientists into an understanding to these answers, scientists lean on the theory of cognitive disinhibition, which suggests that “creativity is the product of reduced control over what is happening inside your mind” (Kaplan). Essentially, cognitive disinhibition is associated to a reduced thickness around the cortex, which makes it more susceptible to processes of memory and thought, allowing for a lack of control, thus more creativity. Donnelly asks scholars of creative writing studies and scholars of creativity in general to remember how little we know regarding the “inception of creative ideas” (Donnelly 95) and the way the brain handles such intuitions. The question is, how do our standard assumptions and teaching strategies found in the introduction to creative writing classroom effect the neurological development of creativity?

To strengthen the foundation of creative writing studies in the future, we might also turn to its past. I wonder if in the future instructors of introduction to creative writing might reconsider the benefits of the avant-garde pedagogy adopted by composer John Cage. Cage assisted in the artistic boom that erupted from Black Mountain College in the 1940’s and 50’s, and was personally influenced by the iChing. When he left Black Mountain, North Carolina for the west coast of California, he led a course at the University of California, Berkeley based on the belief that knowledge was an organic, ever-changing creature, completely dependent on the collision of individual thought. He talks about these experiences, music, and about the significance of mushrooms, in the 1961 book, Silences: Lectures and Writings.

The conceptually-modeled course required each student to go to the university library and pick out a book. Students would read that book for the entire semester, discussing it during class, and connecting the ideas found in their book to the ideas of their peers. They would read, think, and create based purely on the discussions that happened in class. Their ability to check out the book, read the book, discuss the book, and make something regarding the themes presented in the book would result in an A for the course. Often one to shore up against the status quo, Cage was a strong supporter in giving artists, especially student-artists, the time to think and time to create, no matter what it was that they were thinking or making.

One step towards reforming workshop pedagogy is an examination of our course syllabus. How do we define the introduction to creative writing course—or any creative writing course, for that matter? What are our goals, and how are we expecting these goals to be met? Do we offer a variety of teaching strategies, voices, narratives, and mediums by which students might create? Do we encourage a tradition of authorly silence, or do we expect a lively discussions involving all students during class?

Might the introduction to creative writing course also offer students an introduction to the field of creative writing studies, classes that would, according to Dianne Donnelly’s definition of the term, explore “the history of creative writing, its workshop model…and [other] pedagogical practices?” Could the class function as a study of creative writing’s history, with the aims of students being able to advocate for the discipline, asking classes to conduct collaborative research that could be imperative to the rising field? What would the syllabus for a course in Creative Writing Studies look like?

An acute examination of our course syllabi can present educators with a broader understanding of how creative writing introduces students to conceive literature and writing in a global context. If we can reframe our syllabus not as an argument about what creative writing is in the academy (the reading and writing of fiction and poetry), but to what creative writing means for and in our culture, we might find our students (and ourselves) interacting with work from a variety of sources, engaging with communities inside and outside of the academy, and, if we are lucky, making things we had not yet imagined we could make.

Appendix

The syllabi used to gather information for this research derived from the following universities, listed in alphabetic order. The universities marked with an asterisk indicate that two syllabi were used from that institution. The universities marked with two asterisks indicate that three syllabi were used from the institution.

Angelo State University, 2601 W Ave N, San Angelo, Texas 76909
Augustana College, 639 38th St, Island, Illinois, 61201
Bergen Community College, 400 Paramus Road, Paramus, New Jersey 07562
Cabrillo College, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos, California, 95003
Chesapeake College, Todds Performing Arts Center,1000 College Circle, Wye Mills, Maryland 21679
Coffeyville Community College, 400 W 11 St, Coffeyville, Kentucky 67337
*Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
Dixie State University, 225 S700 E St, St. George. Utah 84770
Eastern Washington University, 526 5th Street, Cheney, Washington, 99004
Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Rd, Boca Raton, Florida 33431
Florida Keys Community College, 5901 College Road, Key West, Florida 33040
George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, Virginia 22030
Houston Community College. Houston, Texas. Multiple Campus Nationwide.
Hunter College, City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, New York, 10065
Illinois State University, 100 N University St, Normal, IL 61761
Illinois Valley Community College, 815 N Orlando Smith St, Oglesby Illinois, 61348
Indianapolis University, 1400 East Hanna Avenue, Indianapolis, Indiana 46277
Linfield College, 900 SE Baker St, McMinnville, Oregon 97128
Maryland Institute College of Art, 1300 W Mt Royal Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21217
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Middlesex Community College, 591 Springs Rd, Bedford MA, 01730
Montclair State University, 1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey, 07043
**New York University, 70 Washington Square, New York, New York, 10012
Northern Kentucky University, Louie B Nunn Dr, Highland Heights, Kentucky,41099
Pennsylvania State University, Old Main, Pollock Road, University Park, PA, 16802
Penn State, York, 1031 Edgecomb Avenue, York PA 17403
Rochester Institute of Technology, 500 Hoseph C. Wilson Blvd. Rochester, New York, 14627
Rutgers University, 57 US Highway 1, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901
San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, California 92182
San Jose State University, 1 Washington Square, San Jose, California, 95192
Stephen Austin State University, N 1936 North Street, Nacogdoches, Texas, 75962
**Stonybrook University, State University of New York, 100 Nicolls Road, Stonybrook, New York, 11794
Semester at Sea, Institution for Shipboard Education, 2243 Centre Ave #300, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80526
The University of Iowa, 107 Calvin Hall, Iowa City, Iowa 52242
The University of South Dakota, 414 E Clark Street, Vermillon, South Dakota, 57069
The University of Maine, Heritage House, Oreno, Maine 04473
**Trinity Washington University, 125 Michigan Avenue NE, Washington, DC, 20017
University of Southern California at Los Angeles, 3551 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, California, 9007
University of Kansas, 1450 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, Kansas, 66045
University of Massachusetts, 306 Goodell, Boston, Massachusetts, 01003
University of Nevada, Reno. 1664 N Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada, 89557
University of New Orleans, 2000 Lakeshore Dr, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70148
*University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104
**University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15260
University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Avenue, Tampa, Florida, 33620
*University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, Richardson Texas 75080
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI, 53201
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 1425 South Main Street, Blacksburg, VA, 24061
Washington College, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, Maryland, 21620
William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Haledon, NJ 07470

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Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Abriana Jetté is a writer, educator, and editor. She writes a quarterly column on poetry for Stay Thirsty Magazine, and her work has appeared in dozens of journals including PLUME Poetry Journal, The Seneca Review, The Moth, and others. Currently, she lives in New Jersey, where she is a Lecturer in Writing Studies at Kean University.

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