The document discusses academic writing, emphasizing its characteristics such as being reflective, critical, and systematic. It highlights the challenges and pleasures associated with writing academically, including anxiety and the joy of new insights. The document also mentions the significance of context, audience, and conventions in academic writing, along with references to various academic works related to the topic.

1. Academic writing
Manchester School of Art researcher
development programme
16 November 2016
1

2. 1.What is academic writing?
2.Problems of writing
academically
3.Reading academic writing
2

3. academic
Relating to education or scholarship
Not of practical relevance
3

4. • Reflective
• Critical
• Dialogical
• Theoretical
4

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

7. Writing otherwise
or
creative non-fiction
or
creative criticism
7

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

9. 9

10. Why is it so hard?
• Anxiety
• Not knowing
• Exposing
• Authority
• Disappointment
• Shameful (humiliating)
• Loss
10

11. Pleasures
• New thoughts
• Eureka!
• Making a new form
• Recognition
• Authority
• Satisfaction
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12. Investment (me)
and
Detachment (not-me)
12

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

16. meditative
informative
authoritative
controlling
telling you
reflective
deferential
assertive
lyrical
personal
16

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
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