At the Nexus: Cross-Disciplinary Connections in Creative Writing (Partial CFP)
Creative Writing Studies lives in community with other fields. Grown out of writing studies, CWS has long made strides drawing on frameworks from literary studies, rhetoric and composition, craft studies, and creativity studies. In our past years’ conferences we have seen creative writing explored in tandem with journalism, cognitive psychology, education, critical theory, and trauma-informed care, and more. Given the ever-increasing interest in the field, however, we now find ourselves asking after the other cross-disciplinary connections that might enrich our work, as well as how our work might enrich these other disciplines from which we draw.
To that end, this year we are calling for papers and presentations that put Creative Writing Studies into conversation with subjects, practices, and disciplines often not associated with our field. CWS has historically located itself at the intersection of multiple branches of knowledge creation, but rather than think about the field’s precarious position or the ways it has often existed in tension with other fields, we might instead focus in on its cross-, multi-, inter-, poly- and trans-disciplinary potentials.
In pursuing these connections, we resist the disciplinary siloing that has resulted from the institutional structures of academia. This is especially important during a time of political tension when access to knowledge as well as the production and reception of creative writing have become issues of contention in the public sphere. We as a field must be continually engaged in the project of intellectual renewal by conversing within and beyond our disciplinary boundaries.