PowerPoint presentation for Myna Trustram's session on 'Academic writing' for the Manchester School of Art Researcher Development Programme - workshops and seminars covering research skills, communicating research, and progression through the degree.
5. It’s like research:
• A systematic investigation
• Intentional
• Acquire new knowledge
• Justified
• Communicated
5
6. • Has a thesis or proposition (to be
proved)
• Takes a stance (informative, questioning,
critical)
• Refers to a context
• Has methods
• Follows certain conventions eg
references
• For a particular audience
• A contribution to knowledge
6
8. Writing otherwise as an academic
i.e. not fiction, memoir or autobiography:
Exploration and experiment
What else might you want to say about your
subject?
Subjectivity
Style – more poetic, more personal
In dialogue, collaborative
Mixing of visual and text
Different subject matter
8
13. How much critical [academic] writing is done in
the early hours, fuelled by the promise of next-
day delivery? How much is done through the
course of a quiet day as our attention moves
variously in the vicinity of the materials at hand?
And how much happens piecemeal over weeks
and months, perhaps longer, as the words of
another turn their way round and about our days
and nights?
Benson, S. and Connors, C (eds) (2014) Creative Criticism. An Anthology and Guide.
Edinburgh University Press. p.35 13
14. Bammer, A. and Boetcher Joeres, R-E. (eds) (2015), The Future of
Scholarly Writing. Critical Interventions. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan
Barwick, N. (2003), Mad desire and feverish melancholy: reflections
on the psychodynamics of writing and presenting. British Journal of
Psychotherapy 20 (1), 59-71
Benson, S. and Connors, C (eds) (2014) Creative Criticism. An
Anthology and Guide. Edinburgh University Press
Butler, J. (1990/2007), Gender Trouble. London and New York:
Routledge
Stacey, J. and Wolff, J. (2013), Writing Otherwise: Experiments in
Cultural Criticism. Manchester University Press
Walsh, J. (2014), Interrupting the frame: reflective practice in the
classroom and the consulting room. Pedagogy, Culture and Society,
22 (1), 9-19 14
15. Read these first pages from academic
books.
How do you react to the text?
In what way is the text ‘academic’?
What voice(s) is the writer using?
15
17. Iversen, M. (2007) Beyond Pleasure. Freud, Lacan, Barthes.
Pennsylvania State University
Curtis, N. (2010) The Pictorial Turn. New York: Routledge
Gordon, A.V. (2008) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the
Sociological Imagination. University of Minnesota Press
Davidson, P. (2015) The Last of the Light. About Twilight.
London: Reaktion Books.
Frosh, S. (2013) Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly
Transmissions. London: Palgrave Macmillan
Holly, M.A. (2013) The Melancholy Art. Princeton University
Press
17
Editor's Notes
Letting go
I did something wrong vs something is wrong
‘There was something wonderful, almost magical, about seeing ideas take shape on a deep level that I didn’t know I had. I was learning things.’ Jane Gallop in Bammer, The Future of Scholarly Writing p.35
A state of mind and an activity
What simply exists.
These meet in a transitional space where writing takes place – a space between the pre-verbal, pre-written and the finished product