WRIT200 - Creative Writing International

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Unit rationale, description and aim

This is an advanced unit in the Creative Writing minor sequence and takes place in London and Dublin in intensive mode. It builds on practical writing and editing skills acquired in 100-level units. To be effective as a creative writer requires exposure to other writers, an awareness of issues of global literary culture and a breadth experience. These infuse their writing with a reflexive response to a specific international locales. Professional outcomes in creative writing are improved by exposure to other places and people.

This unit will mix students' own creative direction with sites of literary and cultural interest, giving students an opportunity to create fictional and non-fictional texts while being exposed to environments that are both inspirational and replete with their own history of literary creation. London and Dublin have been centres of literary production and also feature as settings within many famous works of literature. The complex history and culture of each city will encourage a focus on writing 'place' within fiction and non-fictional texts. Students of literary history will observe that works of literature are grounded in real-world places and struggles that are still present in the geography and economies of both cities. The literary productions of the students will reflect on their encounters with these places and their significance. Students will also have the opportunity to reflect on the way their writing adds to the body of work by Australians who have travelled to these locations.

The unit aims to expose creative writers and those interested in literature to international influences to enhance the reach of their writing and the knowledge and understanding from which it springs.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - provide context on the relationship between travel and creative writing (GA1, GA4, GA5, GA6, GA9) 

LO2 - Write fiction and/or non-fiction that relates to and reflects on the ethnic, geographic or economic diversity of London and Dublin (GA1, GA4, GA5, GA6, GA8, GA9) 

LO3 - Be able to locate their own creative practice within the context of the globalisation of Australian writing to London and Dublin (GA4, GA5, GA6) 

Graduate attributes

GA1 - demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA6 - solve problems in a variety of settings taking local and international perspectives into account

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

Content

Topics may include: 

• Travel writing – developing a sense of place 
• Researching place before arrival 
• Writing within and against a tradition 
• Places of creation 
• Creative writing and internationalism 
• The social geography of cities and its role in creative writing 
• The creative writing craft 
• Describing institutional places such as galleries and museums 
• Connections between visual arts, theatre and fiction 
• Colonialism and the Imperial centre 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

Students will engage in immersive active and practical learning to explore London as a complex global city, rather than some sort of racial or cultural ‘home’. Questions of displacement and place will be a constant in this unit, as we consider the history of colonial return to the Imperial centre and the various dislocations and disillusionments this has presented. 

The craft of creative writing will be considered with reference to this sense of place. How places are described in travel writing and works of fiction will be analysed through reflection on existing works as well as by applying this knowledge to the creation of new ones. Reflections on existing works will help provide the context for students’ own works. Students will explore a number of free and quiet locations in which to work and develop their writing – the British Library, Bishopsgate Library, The Barbican centre being examples. 

This immersive learning experience will also include excursions to sites in London, such as: Samuel Johnson’s house and workplace, Charles Dickens’ residence and John Keats’ house in Hampstead. Excursions to sites in Dublin include: the Dublin Writer’s Centre and the James Joyce Museum, the National Library and Long Library at Trinity College. 

Students will also complete pre-departure learning and assessment to ensure adequate knowledge on questions of place and writing. 

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment tasks for this unit have been designed to contribute to high quality student learning by both helping students learn (assessment for learning), and by measuring explicit evidence of their learning (assessment of learning). Assessments have been developed to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements. These have been designed so that they use a variety of tasks to measure the different learning outcomes of the unit. In order to pass this unit, students are required to achieve an overall score of 50% or more. The schedule provides scaffolded learning with opportunities for students to monitor their own progress, practise their skills and receive feedback. 

1. The pre-departure assessment will focus students on the question of place and writing. A number of articles about the globalisation of Australian literature, as well as fictional and non-fictional treatments of London and Dublin will be provided. Students are required to analyse a number of these. This will provide a sense of context for their own writings – the idea that they write from within a history and position. This exercise will be assessed for quality of analysis and ability to synthesise information to make conclusions about the complexity of the place/writing relationship. 
2. The second assessment will be a compilation of daily discussion board reflections students have made. These are to be considered as creative exercises and may engage in novel ways with mode, genre and particular literary devices. These will be posted each day to LEO, be discussed in group work and compiled and edited after return to Australia for assessment. These reflections will have two foci: first, the reaction of students to the sites, places and experiences of the day and secondly a reflective piece that connects these places to their writing in development. 
3. The third and final assessment will be the complete creative piece the student has worked on. This may be a compilation of poems, a travel piece, a short story, a script or other material as discussed with the lecturer. This will be assessed for convincing construction of place, as a London or Dublin setting will be required, as well as for other craft aspects of the mode chosen. In preparation for final assessment there will be peer review of the work in development while in London and Dublin. The final assessment submission will take place three weeks after the return date.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Alexander, Neal and David Cooper. Poetry and geography: Space and place in post-war poetry. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. 

Clark, Michael Dean, Trent Hergenrader, and Joseph Rein, eds. Creative writing in the digital age: Theory, practice, and pedagogy. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015. 

Cresswell, Tim. Place: An introduction. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 

Graham, Robert, et al. The road to somewhere: a creative writing companion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 

Harper, Graeme. The future for creative writing. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. 

Hawkins, Harriet. For creative geographies: Geography, visual arts and the making of worlds. London: Routledge, 2013. 

Mellander, Charlotta, et al., eds. The creative class goes global. London: Routledge, 2013. 

Person, Michael. Reading Life: On books, memory and travel. Macon, Georgia: Mercer UP, 2015. 

Ryle, Martin. Journeys in Ireland: Literary travellers, rural landscapes, cultural relations. Routledge, 2016. 

Snaith, Anna. Modernist voyages: Colonial women writers in London, 1890–1945. Cambridge University Press, 2014.