Abstract
From its founding in October 1996, the Australasian Association of Writing
Programs has had a mercurial identity. Its birth coincides with the struggle of
the discipline of creative writing to secure its place in the academy and, over
the years, to command respect not only as a popular and innovative field but
as one whose research is worthy of respect and resources. It might be argued
that all professional associations are founded because of similar needs.
Creative writing, however, has an idiosyncratic history.1 It has appeared in
primary, secondary and tertiary education as a subject in one form or another
for over a hundred years, but its practitioners have been associated with it for
far longer (Harper, 2005 and Myers, 1996, et al.). It is neither a recombination
nor the splitting of already established fields, such as Literature or Composition,
nor a product of new technologies, although each area has impacted on
its development. This paper briefly traces the development of creative writing
in Australian tertiary education from 1996 to the present, examining its
institutional formation, its contributions to undergraduate and postgraduate
teaching and its growing identity as a research discipline which has been
intrinsic to the development and activities of the AAWP.
Programs has had a mercurial identity. Its birth coincides with the struggle of
the discipline of creative writing to secure its place in the academy and, over
the years, to command respect not only as a popular and innovative field but
as one whose research is worthy of respect and resources. It might be argued
that all professional associations are founded because of similar needs.
Creative writing, however, has an idiosyncratic history.1 It has appeared in
primary, secondary and tertiary education as a subject in one form or another
for over a hundred years, but its practitioners have been associated with it for
far longer (Harper, 2005 and Myers, 1996, et al.). It is neither a recombination
nor the splitting of already established fields, such as Literature or Composition,
nor a product of new technologies, although each area has impacted on
its development. This paper briefly traces the development of creative writing
in Australian tertiary education from 1996 to the present, examining its
institutional formation, its contributions to undergraduate and postgraduate
teaching and its growing identity as a research discipline which has been
intrinsic to the development and activities of the AAWP.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 238-263 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | New Writing |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |