Time is a resource. “Dwell time” is used to measure how long visitors spend reading a website. A similar concept might apply to issues of social justice – but in the classroom, instructors can curate the readings, and then grade student’s based on their performance of active “engagement.” This gets at the crux of Amato…
Amato, Joe and H. Kassia Fleisher. “Reforming Creative Writing Pedagogy: History as Knowledge, Knowledge as Activism.” Web. Fundamental questions that arise in reform pedagogy: Can writing be effectively taught without also addressing the historical and cultural contexts that determine how writing is judged? (probably not…) What do we mean by “higher efucation” in terms of…
Quoting Harold Singerman, Amato and Fleisher strongly critique pedagogical approaches that position creative writing as (mere) craft, particularly in the MFA workshop, where the focus on language and style can lead to a dangerous degree of homogeneity.
Amato and Fleisher ask “Is the creative writing classroom a place simply for fortifying the mysteries of creativity, or can something more concrete, more palpable, more critical, more urgent therein be attended to?” (“Prelude,” authors’ emphasis). They go on to write that “current compartmentalizations of English Studies…can only produce narrowly self-identified writers, writers likely to acknowledge…
