Teaching Cultural Dexterity in Creative Writing

✍ Scribed by Micah McCrary

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 209
• Series: Research in Creative Writing
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Blending resources from creative writing studies, sociolinguistics, and writing and composition studies, this series of essays offers a formula for important changes within creative writing instruction, probing how it might be more inclusive and accessible for marginalized student-authors. Aimed at graduate student instructors as the future of teaching, and other teacher-practitioners of the subject, this book uses anticolonial, feminist, and antiracist methodologies to explore the 21st-century professional, institutional, and theoretical concerns surrounding creative writing practices in North American higher education. At the forefront of this vital resource is Micah McCrary's exploration of the ways creative writing pedagogy and theory can be adapted for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and non-native English student-authors who often inhabit minoritized and marginalized positions within colleges and universities.
Applying as a frame the notion of cultural dexterity as it is taught to medical professionals to allow them to engage effectively with patients from all backgrounds, ethnics groups and with all sensitivities, Teaching Cultural Dexterity in Creative Writing examines why and how creative writing instruction needs to be urgently renegotiated. In this essential text for all creative writing instructors, McCray provides all the tools necessary to take positive action with discussions of potential readings, writing prompts and sample course materials.

✦ Table of Contents

Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Tables
Acknowledgments
Beyond Belonging: An Introduction
Calls for Change
Parallel Practice(s)
Overview
Casting a Wide(r) Net
Chapter 1: Difficult Dialogues: Toward a Trauma-Informed Creative Writing Workshop
Fishes Out of Water: (Normative) Workshops as Traumatizing Spaces
GSI Resources
Praxis
Conclusions
Writing Prompts
Chapter 2: Writing Lives at the Roundtable: Toward Teaching Students-as-Authors
Authorial Lives and Constructions
Idea and Identity: The Whole Picture
GSI Resources
Praxis
Conclusions
Writing Prompts
Chapter 3: Why Bother in English? On Creative Writing’s Translingual Potential
(Classroom) Acts of Reclamation
Breaking (out of) English: The Languages of Our Souls
Breaking (out of) English: Meaning-Making, Literature, and Deafness
Breaking (out of) English: Workshopping China
GSI Resources
Praxis
Conclusions
Writing Prompts
Chapter 4: Before and Beyond Genre: Critically Considering Craft in the Nonfiction Classroom
Our People, Ourselves
GSI Resources
Praxis
Conclusions
Writing Prompts
Chapter 5: Beyond Genesis: A Transcultural Exigency for Research in Creative Writing
In the Room, On the Scene
GSI Resources
Praxis
Conclusions
Writing Prompts
Chapter 6: Toward Critical Concepts in the Nonfiction Classroom: Some Reflections on Course Designs
Course Description: Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Course Description: Studies in Creative Nonfiction
Institutional Context
Scholarly Rationale
Reflection
Conclusions
Chapter 7: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going: Considerations and Continuations
Appendix A: Sample Syllabus—Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Course Description: Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Prerequisite/Corequisite
Audience
Credits
Learning Objectives
Required Texts/Supplies
Course Requirements and Expectations
Homework and In-Class Activities
Workshop Groups
Grade Breakdown
Appendix B: Sample Schedule—Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Appendix C: Sample Trajectory—Introduction to Creative Nonfiction
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Appendix D: Sample Syllabus—Studies in Creative Nonfiction
Course Description: Studies in Creative Nonfiction
Prerequisite/Corequisite
Audience
Credits
Learning Objectives
Required Texts/Supplies
Course Requirements and Expectations
Homework and In-Class Activities
Workshop Groups
Grade Breakdown
Appendix E: Sample Schedule—Studies in Creative Nonfiction
Appendix F: Sample Trajectory—Studies in Creative Nonfiction
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Appendix G: Sample Project—Flash Nonfiction
Description
Criteria Overview
Appendix H: Sample Project—Researched Nonfiction or Literary Translation
Description
Option #1: Researched Literary Nonfiction
Prompts below:
Option #2: Literary Translation (plus commentary essay)
Instructions for Option #1
Instructions for Option #2
Criteria Overview
Appendix I: Sample Project—Identity Notebook
Description
Criteria Overview
Appendix J: Sample Project—Revision for Targeted Publication + Exam Questions
Part 1: Revision for Targeted Publication
Publication List
Part 2: Responses to Exam Questions
Criteria Overview
Index