Decolonizing Discipline: Creative Projects and/as Critical Discourse

Jason S POLLEY

Decolonizing Discipline: Creative Projects and/as Critical Discourse

Jason S POLLEY^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Academy of Language and Culture

Research output: Contribution to conference › Conference paper › peer-review

Abstract

Make it yours. Make it fun. Make it meaningful. In this talk I address how these three “Make it” imperatives are synonymous in the context of assigning “final projects” in lieu of “final essays” in the (advanced) undergraduate classroom. When a student cares, that is, when she is obliged to create some sort of hybrid new, rather than (re)produce yet another timeworn “essay,” the paradigm of learning alters from one demarcated by interpellation to one established in enthusiasm. Certainly, this openness, the very openness that leaves the parameters of evaluation/expectation undefined (after all, most students de facto overlook the potentials of the ubiquitous university “essay”), is not an immediate precursor to enthusiasm. Most of my students prima facie encounter the “too” loose parameters of “final project” with anxiety. But preliminary anxiety bests initial ennui, particularly when “creativity,” “critical thinking,” “originality,” and “agency” are not just institutional buzzwords being paid lip service to. The passive voice concluding my previous sentence is intentional. It speaks, in my experience (an experience increasingly indebted to expunging the artificial border between creativity and criticism) to student investment—and the lack thereof when students aren’t personally compelled to convince readers/viewers how and why their storytelling contributions are crucial.

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - 24 May 2019
Event	Writing Roundtable 2019: Storytelling in Academic and Creative Writing - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China Duration: 17 May 2019 → 17 May 2019 https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference/WR/index.php/WR/WR2019 (Link to conference's website) https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference/WR/index.php/WR/WR2019/schedConf/program (Link to conference's program list) https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference/WR/docs/WR2019Programme.pdf (Link to conference's program file)

Workshop

Workshop	Writing Roundtable 2019
Country/Territory	China
City	Hong Kong
Period	17/05/19 → 17/05/19
Other	The Writing Roundtable 2019 - Storytelling in Creative and Academic Writing - aspires to bring forth the need for employing narratives in our academic and writing careers. We do not necessarily think of storytelling when preparing for our academic writing lessons. We tend to be oblivious of the fact that research is often conducted to discover the stories underneath the various phenomena. Our pedagogies for academic writing have carefully been crafted to present reality as a fixed set of rules. In some disciplines, however, this cannot work. In social sciences, law and medicine, for example, case scenarios are used to mimic reality, in which stories are woven, sometimes, to protect the identities of the individuals involved. A pedagogy that utilises storytelling could, therefore, bring the rather cut-and- dried world of academic writing classrooms to life and bridge the gap between the humanities and the sciences, the arts and mathematics. Writing is storytelling. As creative writers, we have much to contribute to teaching and learning of writing. Human minds engage with stories like nothing else. The narrative texts and poems that fill the shelves of bookshops and libraries need to become part of our classrooms and to adorn our students’ bedside tables. We teach writing, but do we do enough to develop our readers early on? If we do not think of ways to use narratives within our classrooms, how will we cultivate a generation that reads and values erudition? How can students even express themselves in writing, if they do not read? So how can we do this? How can we weave narratives into our lesson plans? How can we learn about the stories our students are inspired by? How do we ignite our students' passion for stories that surround them so that they become engaging writers and storytellers?
Internet address	https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference/WR/index.php/WR/WR2019 (Link to conference's website) https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference/WR/index.php/WR/WR2019/schedConf/program (Link to conference's program list) https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference/WR/docs/WR2019Programme.pdf (Link to conference's program file)

Cite this

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title = "Decolonizing Discipline: Creative Projects and/as Critical Discourse",

abstract = "Make it yours. Make it fun. Make it meaningful. In this talk I address how these three “Make it” imperatives are synonymous in the context of assigning “final projects” in lieu of “final essays” in the (advanced) undergraduate classroom. When a student cares, that is, when she is obliged to create some sort of hybrid new, rather than (re)produce yet another timeworn “essay,” the paradigm of learning alters from one demarcated by interpellation to one established in enthusiasm. Certainly, this openness, the very openness that leaves the parameters of evaluation/expectation undefined (after all, most students de facto overlook the potentials of the ubiquitous university “essay”), is not an immediate precursor to enthusiasm. Most of my students prima facie encounter the “too” loose parameters of “final project” with anxiety. But preliminary anxiety bests initial ennui, particularly when “creativity,” “critical thinking,” “originality,” and “agency” are not just institutional buzzwords being paid lip service to. The passive voice concluding my previous sentence is intentional. It speaks, in my experience (an experience increasingly indebted to expunging the artificial border between creativity and criticism) to student investment—and the lack thereof when students aren{\textquoteright}t personally compelled to convince readers/viewers how and why their storytelling contributions are crucial. ",

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AB - Make it yours. Make it fun. Make it meaningful. In this talk I address how these three “Make it” imperatives are synonymous in the context of assigning “final projects” in lieu of “final essays” in the (advanced) undergraduate classroom. When a student cares, that is, when she is obliged to create some sort of hybrid new, rather than (re)produce yet another timeworn “essay,” the paradigm of learning alters from one demarcated by interpellation to one established in enthusiasm. Certainly, this openness, the very openness that leaves the parameters of evaluation/expectation undefined (after all, most students de facto overlook the potentials of the ubiquitous university “essay”), is not an immediate precursor to enthusiasm. Most of my students prima facie encounter the “too” loose parameters of “final project” with anxiety. But preliminary anxiety bests initial ennui, particularly when “creativity,” “critical thinking,” “originality,” and “agency” are not just institutional buzzwords being paid lip service to. The passive voice concluding my previous sentence is intentional. It speaks, in my experience (an experience increasingly indebted to expunging the artificial border between creativity and criticism) to student investment—and the lack thereof when students aren’t personally compelled to convince readers/viewers how and why their storytelling contributions are crucial.

M3 - Conference paper

T2 - Writing Roundtable 2019

Y2 - 17 May 2019 through 17 May 2019

ER -

Decolonizing Discipline: Creative Projects and/as Critical Discourse

Abstract

Workshop

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Cite this