"Critiquing Calypso: Authorial and Academic Bias in the Reading of a Young Adult Novel" (original) (raw)

Mythoplasia and Fictioning in Academic Practice: "Writing; Other"

UN | WRITING - New Perspectives in Academic Writing, 2022

This paper proposes alternative ways to approach reading and writing in academic practice, particularly in research methods training and University course of art and design. The academy (now Higher Education and particularly in the UK) has progressively acquired – and applied in the last 20 years – a plethora of business-oriented strategies and principles. One of these regards successful education of the individual as effective preparation for employment, marking a notable shift of interest and effort towards “employability” of the graduate (and therefore good metrics). At the same time, studying at University has been and will continue to be an academic experience, most notable for the intellectual challenges and aspirations that many prospective students thankfully still seek for. We must address as such the momentum reached by the unpopular strands of theoretical education associated with writing practice, particularly in the creative and humanities subjects and how these may maintain rigour, interest, and effectiveness in skills acquisition. To do so, first we have to affirm how reading, writing and text are used widely and stop demonising technological advancements that come with particular intricacies of text use: social media platforms such as Twitter and Messenger, coding and programming languages, use of digitised and auto-corrected text and of course the typing/writing duet. For these to become methods in effective academic practice I propose that we employ perhaps the most distinct feature of human intellectual capacity: imagination. I will link this to the concept of myth and method for fictioning after Simon O’ Sullivan, interrogate the notion of fabulation by Bogue following Bergson and use Helene Cixous’ Writing Blind to create a paradigm for “writing; other”. The latter will aim to create a non-indexed, maverick writing method using a synthesis of literary theories in the context of scholarly academic practice.

Editorial: Towards a History of the Modern Practice of Fiction

Journal of Literary Theory, 2020

This issue of the Journal of Literary Theory is devoted to the »History of the Modern Practice of Fiction«. As this title already signals, the idea for this Special Issue stems, on the one hand, from a certain way of thinking about the phenomenon of fiction developed in literary theory and philosophy and, on the other hand, from research carried out in the historical disciplines.

‘When Literature Scholars Write for General Readers: A Two-Person, First-Person Essay,’

Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 2019

When Literature Scholars Write for General Readers a two-person, first-person essay sue norton and laurence w. mazzeno This dually authored first-person essay offers a narrative account of the far-ranging writing experiences of two well-established academics who, like many others working in higher education, contribute writing to mainstream publications as well as to scholarly ones. The essay considers the implications for professional and personal reputations when material targeted at one kind of audience is easily accessible by another through internet 'context collapse. ' It argues for an inextricable connection between authorial ethics and the essential rigour of all good writing, and it encourages scholar-writers to invest their energies in non-scholarly writing for its value to society.

The Truth about Fiction: In Our Own Write

1995

This paper presents aspects of a study in progress on the legitimate function of fiction in research. A section on methodology describes how the study started with a project of narratives written in response to the black and white photographs of one of the collaborators. Analysis of the response process revealed a connection between fiction and truth. As the project evolved and was critiqued, the focus changed and transcriptions from presentations, stories from other doctoral students, and an eclectic group of readings moved the study from the concrete response to the photographs and narratives to the theoretical, eclectic, and philosophical. The next section describes how the study evolved and was reinterpreted in response to the specific comments of others regarding executing the work, researching for meaning, continuing the execution, acting as teacher researchers, and researching the research. A section on the researchers' own agenda touches on crafting, the ethics and aesthetics of fiction, and the function of fiction. A conclusion poses some seminal questions for future discussion and suggests that fiction can be an alternative way to meet the needs of researchers wishing to articulate sensitive issues or convey what literal language cannot. A photograph that was the basis of interpretive stories is included. (Contains 85 references.) (JB)

Valid Fictional Contributions to Non-Fictional Debates: Fictocritical Writing in Artistic Research

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, 2023

Fictocritical writing has been defined as an interdisciplinary practice that seeks to 'blur the boundaries between the fictional, the factual and the theoretical'. As a mode of experimental writing, it holds a great potential to reinvigorate the current state of critical art writing-specifically, artistic research. The present paper sets out to investigate the usefulness of venturing beyond the constative function of the text and discusses the performative nature of writing employed at the service of artistic enquiry. To that end, I examine three key case studies that shed light on the intricacies of fictocritical writing: Bert Danckaert's 'The Extras', Barbara Browning's 'The Gift', and Katrina Palmer's 'The Dark Object'. They all constitute artistic research projects written as novels (two of them are also PhD theses) that, at the same time, are inscribed in an art project. Furthermore, I offer a practice-based example, an excerpt from my novel 'The Fantasy of the Novel' (also part of my PhD thesis), with the hope that the reader will be able to apprehend the effects of fictocritical writing directly, rather than just their description.

In the Flesh: Fiction as an "Incarnational Art

2015

In the Flesh: Fiction as an "Incarnational Art" I arrived in Chicago in January of 2014, fresh from the warm Southern embrace of an imaginative English department at a small Christian liberal arts university. Chicago, as I saw it, was rich in artistic appreciation and participation, but equally abounding in rugged industrial pragmatism. Throughout that spring 2014 semester, I commuted from Pilsen, my beloved neighborhood known for its artists (some of whom also worked in a more "practical" job to earn money) to the business center of the city (which was not devoid of artists either). Although the world of ideas and intuition can overlap the world of business and materialism, the two often conflict. I am by no account a professional artist, but I do consider literary art an essential part of my self-expression and identity. My struggle to find the time and energy to write as much as I felt I needed to while in Chicago enabled me to empathize with the artists in my community. As I attempted to balance practical necessities like cooking, cleaning, and working at my internship, with the need to regularly and creatively express myself, it became clear to me that sustaining the creative mind and soul does not always coincide perfectly with sustaining the body. When time, energy, and resources are limited, one realm of human need must take precedence over the other. This dichotomy led me toward an interest in the intersection between art-especially literary art-and our physical human lives. Thornberry Thesis 2 When Amy Sonheim, one of my professors in that precious English department mentioned above, came to town in February, she suggested over lunch that I read Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners. Valuing her recommendation, I immediately ordered the book and soon found that O'Connor, too, takes note of the split between the realms of body and of soul, of form and of content, or-in her words-of mystery and of manners. In "The Nature and Aim of Fiction," one of several essays that make up the book, O'Connor briefly addresses the conflict that arises when artists, particularly writers, seek to "write well and live well at the same time" (66). She implies that good writers rarely live in financial comfort unless the writer already has copious amounts of money available by some other means. That is, good writing is a full-time job that doesn't pay well. However, writers who work for the quality of what they write don't write primarily because they want financial rewards.

Studying Fiction

Studying Fiction, 2021

The right of Jessica Mason and Marcello Giovanelli to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. five years. We are grateful to everyone we have taught and worked with; all of you have helped to shape the ideas in this book. As always, we are grateful as ever to our colleagues, families and friends and would also like to acknowledge the support of the team at Routledge at the various stages of writing. Finally, Jessica Mason would like to extend special thanks to Ben Hannam and Kate Longson, without whom her involvement in the final preparations of the manuscript of this book would simply not have been possible. We are grateful for permission to reproduce parts of the following research papers in Chapter 2 of this book: "Well I don't feel that": Schemas, worlds and authentic reading in the classroom, by Marcello Giovanelli and Jessica Mason, English in Education, 2015, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.tandfonline.com) "What do you think?" Let me tell you: Discourse about texts and the literature classroom, by Jessica Mason and Marcello Giovanelli, Changing English, 2017, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.tandfonline.com)