Alysha Griffin
Annotated Bibliography: Creative Approaches to Composition
My own experiences with cultural insensitivity and my background in African American literature compel me to approach the teaching of writing through a lens that does not perpetuate institutions of social oppression. Thus, I believe that incorporating creativity in the teaching of writing is useful to allow students to explore critical perspectives and their relation to them. Creative thinking and writing allow a student to think outside of the conventional. Students learn to write through experimentation and learn through being subjective. By teaching creativity as a means to learn effective communication, students’ personal experiences may be validated and challenged through the classroom as their peers are exposed to personal perspectives. Essentially, I think creativity is an ideal medium through which reciprocal learning can take place in the classroom.
Baer, John and Sharon McKool. “How Rewards and Evaluations Can Undermine Creativity (and How to Prevent This).” The Psychology of Creative Writing. Eds. Scott Kaufman and James Kaufman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 277- 286. Print.
When using the creative approach to composition, there exists the danger of undermining the “principles” of creative writing, which uphold exploration and innovative thought. Evaluation compromises the use of creativity because it implies that there is a right and wrong way of writing. Baer and McKool’s essay rectifies the contradictions between creative writing and evaluation. Rather than making grading and creative writing mutually exclusive, the two writers argue that there is a place and need for evaluation and non-punitive exploration. Both of these, they argue, are crucial to providing “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” motivations for students to write. Baer and McKool suggest teachers provide times for creative writing that will not be evaluated and times in which evaluation are necessary. Furthermore, to lessen the impact of evaluation on students’ desires to write, that evaluation takes the form of informative rather than evaluative. Baer and McKool’s essay is most useful for understanding how to implement an approach to grading.
Cain, Mary Ann. “Interchanges: Inquiring into the Nexus of Composition Studies and Creative Writing.” College Composition and Communication 51.1 (1999): 70-95. JSTOR. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
“Interchanges: Inquiring into the Nexus of Composition Studies and Creative Writing” is a compilation of essays from a symposium that examine the intersections of creative writing and composition. The article consists of “Locating Boundaries of Composition and Creative Writing” by Ted Lardner, “Interrogating the Boundaries of Discourse in a Creative Writing Class: Politicizing the Parameters of the Permissible” by George Kalamaras, “(Re) Writing Craft” by Tim Mayers, and Problematizing Formalism: A Double Cross of Genre Boundaries” by Mary Ann Cain. Mary Cain’s piece is useful in that she suggests that formalism will always be present in writing. Rather than neglect this presence, she proposes that we acknowledge the ways formalism informs pedagogy in both composition and creative writing to alert us of when we construct false dichotomies between need and desire, function and form, openness and resistance” (94). Cain’s proposal suggests that formalism should not be thrown out of the creative approach to composition and might be used effectively in teaching the craft of writing.
Lardner, Ted. “Locating the Boundaries of Composition and Creative Writing.” College Composition and Communication 51.1 (1999): 72-77. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.
In this short article, Lardner uses Richard Fulkerson’s “Composition Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus and Paradigmatic Diversity” as a way of analyzing the practices and scholarship of creative writing. He argues that “ while creative writing has important lessons to learn from composition in reference to process, pedagogy, and epistemology, composition has a significant lessons to be learned from creative writing in terms of axiology” (72). He determines that creative writing pedagogy tends to illustrate writing as a purely expressivist process while in reality some processes involve more particular methods. According to Lardner, the creative writing pedagogy also possesses a narrow perspective as it typically relies on the perspective of the writer and not social implications within the actual text. Lardner goes further to point out that while composition classrooms serve as a place of equal opportunity for students, creative writing classrooms frequently garner talent as a marker for student success. He goes further to question the position of the writer, the academic discourse. While creative writing could improve in these areas, composition as a discipline suffers from a strict focus on curriculum and the firmly held notion that good writing is solely structural. For the purposes of using creative writing as a way of teaching composition, Lardner’s article is useful in navigating the some of the issues of a creative focus in the composition classroom, particularly the need to pay attention to classroom procedures and the writing process.
Mayers, Tim. (Re) Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies. Pittsburg: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Print.
This book works to provide a history and examination of the intersections of composition and creative writing. Similar to Mary Cain, Mayers suggests bridging specific commonalities between creative writing and composition. Rather than using formalism to do this, Mayers suggests using “craft criticism” which is discourse that addresses problematic practices in creative writing. Using this framework for developing the connection between creative writing and composition, Mayers suggests expanding the term “craft” to not only encompass the method of writing but also the sociopolitical implications to creative writing and aesthetics to discussions of composition. Mayers maintains the notion that with the creative approach to writing in composition exists the need to pay equal attention to the reception of text and the stylistic elements of writing.
McCracken, Timothy and W. Allen Ashby. “ The Widow’s Walk: An Alternative for English 101—Creative Communications.” College English 36.5 (1975): 555-566. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.
This article locates apathy in classroom as failure in the teaching of writing. McCracken and Ashby determine that an emotional disconnect amongst students is a significant hindrance to first year composition classes. Furthermore, the goals of English departments do not encourage emotional connections to the subject. Both the students and the teachers lack passion. They argue that what is intended to direct students undermines the notion that writing should be a process of discovery. To create their ideal learning situation, the authors propose that the teacher’s role is to emotionally reconnect students to their surroundings. Thus, they should create situations that require responses and make the choices available relevant to their students’ lives. The authors suggest that learning the craft of writing happens with tutorial sessions with the teacher. Consequently, the classroom serves as a place to generate ideas and explore perspectives, and make thoughtful decisions. Students are given grades based on meeting their personal writing goals and standards.
Newkirk, Thomas. The Performance of the Self in Student Writing. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1997.
Newkirk contends that all writing is actually a performance of the self. His study investigates the ways that writing performance of an idealized understanding of who we should be (4). Most useful is his discussion of self-expression in the classroom and the role of the teacher in summoning particular identities.
Percy, Bernard. The Power of Creative Writing: A Handbook of Insights, Activities, and Information to Get Your Students Involved. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981.
The Power of Creative Writing argues for the use of creative writing to arouse student interest in writing. It follows the expressivist approach that focuses on increasing students’ desires to write and using creative writing to develop the personal lives of students. Although outdated and made problematic by recent critiques of purely expressivist approaches, the book provides a variety of ways to implement creative writing into the classroom.
Pumphrey, Jean. “Teaching English Composition as a Creative Art.” College English 34.5 (1973): 666-673. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.
In “Teaching English Composition as a Creative Art,” Jean Pumphrey considers writing as a “process of discovery” and the teaching of writing as a reciprocal process in which the relationship between the student and the teacher shifts to become a student-peer relationship. He states that the teacher and students “mutually rediscover that language lives, that the word is alive, and that writing is a process of discovery” (667). Throughout the article, Pumphrey considers writing as a process in which ideas are initially fragmented then pieced together. This approach emphasizes the revision process. The classroom that Pumphrey describes utilizes creative, in-class writing assignments, encourages discussion, gives exercises that encourage quantity rather than quality, and assigns fictional readings. Formal assignments may be traditional papers or creative pieces. Students are allowed to re-submit assignments, and Pumphrey notes, the class would be more effective if final grades were pass/fail. This article justifies the creative approach to writing through reasoning that by permitting students to explore writing, they can develop a pleasure for language, and consequently an interest in the craft.
Romano, Tom. Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Paper. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000.
In Blending Genre, Altering Style discusses the usefulness of multigenre papers and the implementation of these types of papers in the classroom. Romono asserts that multigenre papers are of the expressive method of writing. He differentiates expressive writing from poetic and transactional. While he defines poetic writing as creative writing and transactional writing as persuasive writing, expressive writing concerns the personal and exploratory. Ultimately, the multigenre paper deals with “how we perceive and use language” (138). This genre study helps to understand the ways that creative writing and thinking may be used in the composition classroom as a tool for discovery.
Werry, Richard. “Creative Education.” The Journal of Higher Education 20.5 (1949): 234-241 + 280-281. JSTOR. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.
This article establishes student indifference towards education well before the technological age. Written in 1949, Werry discusses the failure of the education system to stimulate forward thinking. According to Werry, America’s strict adherence to ideals and morals of the past lead to a conservative and stifling education system. More directly, Werry points to capitalism as the main source for the lack of creative thinking. Success is defined in terms of materialism rather than personal interpretations of success. In regard to the use of creative writing in the composition classroom, Werry’s article implies that creative writing in the composition classroom could be used to develop students’ ability to think creatively and independently.
Annotated Bibliography: Creative Approaches to Composition
My own experiences with cultural insensitivity and my background in African American literature compel me to approach the teaching of writing through a lens that does not perpetuate institutions of social oppression. Thus, I believe that incorporating creativity in the teaching of writing is useful to allow students to explore critical perspectives and their relation to them. Creative thinking and writing allow a student to think outside of the conventional. Students learn to write through experimentation and learn through being subjective. By teaching creativity as a means to learn effective communication, students’ personal experiences may be validated and challenged through the classroom as their peers are exposed to personal perspectives. Essentially, I think creativity is an ideal medium through which reciprocal learning can take place in the classroom.
Baer, John and Sharon McKool. “How Rewards and Evaluations Can Undermine Creativity (and How to Prevent This).” The Psychology of Creative Writing. Eds. Scott Kaufman and James Kaufman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 277- 286. Print.
When using the creative approach to composition, there exists the danger of undermining the “principles” of creative writing, which uphold exploration and innovative thought. Evaluation compromises the use of creativity because it implies that there is a right and wrong way of writing. Baer and McKool’s essay rectifies the contradictions between creative writing and evaluation. Rather than making grading and creative writing mutually exclusive, the two writers argue that there is a place and need for evaluation and non-punitive exploration. Both of these, they argue, are crucial to providing “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” motivations for students to write. Baer and McKool suggest teachers provide times for creative writing that will not be evaluated and times in which evaluation are necessary. Furthermore, to lessen the impact of evaluation on students’ desires to write, that evaluation takes the form of informative rather than evaluative. Baer and McKool’s essay is most useful for understanding how to implement an approach to grading.
Cain, Mary Ann. “Interchanges: Inquiring into the Nexus of Composition Studies and Creative Writing.” College Composition and Communication 51.1 (1999): 70-95. JSTOR. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.
“Interchanges: Inquiring into the Nexus of Composition Studies and Creative Writing” is a compilation of essays from a symposium that examine the intersections of creative writing and composition. The article consists of “Locating Boundaries of Composition and Creative Writing” by Ted Lardner, “Interrogating the Boundaries of Discourse in a Creative Writing Class: Politicizing the Parameters of the Permissible” by George Kalamaras, “(Re) Writing Craft” by Tim Mayers, and Problematizing Formalism: A Double Cross of Genre Boundaries” by Mary Ann Cain. Mary Cain’s piece is useful in that she suggests that formalism will always be present in writing. Rather than neglect this presence, she proposes that we acknowledge the ways formalism informs pedagogy in both composition and creative writing to alert us of when we construct false dichotomies between need and desire, function and form, openness and resistance” (94). Cain’s proposal suggests that formalism should not be thrown out of the creative approach to composition and might be used effectively in teaching the craft of writing.
Lardner, Ted. “Locating the Boundaries of Composition and Creative Writing.” College Composition and Communication 51.1 (1999): 72-77. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.
In this short article, Lardner uses Richard Fulkerson’s “Composition Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus and Paradigmatic Diversity” as a way of analyzing the practices and scholarship of creative writing. He argues that “ while creative writing has important lessons to learn from composition in reference to process, pedagogy, and epistemology, composition has a significant lessons to be learned from creative writing in terms of axiology” (72). He determines that creative writing pedagogy tends to illustrate writing as a purely expressivist process while in reality some processes involve more particular methods. According to Lardner, the creative writing pedagogy also possesses a narrow perspective as it typically relies on the perspective of the writer and not social implications within the actual text. Lardner goes further to point out that while composition classrooms serve as a place of equal opportunity for students, creative writing classrooms frequently garner talent as a marker for student success. He goes further to question the position of the writer, the academic discourse. While creative writing could improve in these areas, composition as a discipline suffers from a strict focus on curriculum and the firmly held notion that good writing is solely structural. For the purposes of using creative writing as a way of teaching composition, Lardner’s article is useful in navigating the some of the issues of a creative focus in the composition classroom, particularly the need to pay attention to classroom procedures and the writing process.
Mayers, Tim. (Re) Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies. Pittsburg: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Print.
This book works to provide a history and examination of the intersections of composition and creative writing. Similar to Mary Cain, Mayers suggests bridging specific commonalities between creative writing and composition. Rather than using formalism to do this, Mayers suggests using “craft criticism” which is discourse that addresses problematic practices in creative writing. Using this framework for developing the connection between creative writing and composition, Mayers suggests expanding the term “craft” to not only encompass the method of writing but also the sociopolitical implications to creative writing and aesthetics to discussions of composition. Mayers maintains the notion that with the creative approach to writing in composition exists the need to pay equal attention to the reception of text and the stylistic elements of writing.
McCracken, Timothy and W. Allen Ashby. “ The Widow’s Walk: An Alternative for English 101—Creative Communications.” College English 36.5 (1975): 555-566. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.
This article locates apathy in classroom as failure in the teaching of writing. McCracken and Ashby determine that an emotional disconnect amongst students is a significant hindrance to first year composition classes. Furthermore, the goals of English departments do not encourage emotional connections to the subject. Both the students and the teachers lack passion. They argue that what is intended to direct students undermines the notion that writing should be a process of discovery. To create their ideal learning situation, the authors propose that the teacher’s role is to emotionally reconnect students to their surroundings. Thus, they should create situations that require responses and make the choices available relevant to their students’ lives. The authors suggest that learning the craft of writing happens with tutorial sessions with the teacher. Consequently, the classroom serves as a place to generate ideas and explore perspectives, and make thoughtful decisions. Students are given grades based on meeting their personal writing goals and standards.
Newkirk, Thomas. The Performance of the Self in Student Writing. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1997.
Newkirk contends that all writing is actually a performance of the self. His study investigates the ways that writing performance of an idealized understanding of who we should be (4). Most useful is his discussion of self-expression in the classroom and the role of the teacher in summoning particular identities.
Percy, Bernard. The Power of Creative Writing: A Handbook of Insights, Activities, and Information to Get Your Students Involved. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981.
The Power of Creative Writing argues for the use of creative writing to arouse student interest in writing. It follows the expressivist approach that focuses on increasing students’ desires to write and using creative writing to develop the personal lives of students. Although outdated and made problematic by recent critiques of purely expressivist approaches, the book provides a variety of ways to implement creative writing into the classroom.
Pumphrey, Jean. “Teaching English Composition as a Creative Art.” College English 34.5 (1973): 666-673. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.
In “Teaching English Composition as a Creative Art,” Jean Pumphrey considers writing as a “process of discovery” and the teaching of writing as a reciprocal process in which the relationship between the student and the teacher shifts to become a student-peer relationship. He states that the teacher and students “mutually rediscover that language lives, that the word is alive, and that writing is a process of discovery” (667). Throughout the article, Pumphrey considers writing as a process in which ideas are initially fragmented then pieced together. This approach emphasizes the revision process. The classroom that Pumphrey describes utilizes creative, in-class writing assignments, encourages discussion, gives exercises that encourage quantity rather than quality, and assigns fictional readings. Formal assignments may be traditional papers or creative pieces. Students are allowed to re-submit assignments, and Pumphrey notes, the class would be more effective if final grades were pass/fail. This article justifies the creative approach to writing through reasoning that by permitting students to explore writing, they can develop a pleasure for language, and consequently an interest in the craft.
Romano, Tom. Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Paper. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000.
In Blending Genre, Altering Style discusses the usefulness of multigenre papers and the implementation of these types of papers in the classroom. Romono asserts that multigenre papers are of the expressive method of writing. He differentiates expressive writing from poetic and transactional. While he defines poetic writing as creative writing and transactional writing as persuasive writing, expressive writing concerns the personal and exploratory. Ultimately, the multigenre paper deals with “how we perceive and use language” (138). This genre study helps to understand the ways that creative writing and thinking may be used in the composition classroom as a tool for discovery.
Werry, Richard. “Creative Education.” The Journal of Higher Education 20.5 (1949): 234-241 + 280-281. JSTOR. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.
This article establishes student indifference towards education well before the technological age. Written in 1949, Werry discusses the failure of the education system to stimulate forward thinking. According to Werry, America’s strict adherence to ideals and morals of the past lead to a conservative and stifling education system. More directly, Werry points to capitalism as the main source for the lack of creative thinking. Success is defined in terms of materialism rather than personal interpretations of success. In regard to the use of creative writing in the composition classroom, Werry’s article implies that creative writing in the composition classroom could be used to develop students’ ability to think creatively and independently.