TT MAY PHD SESSION 2024, PUBLIC TALK - 'CREATIVE NONFICTION AND THE GENRE OF THESIS WITH ROBYN FERRELL'
MODERATED BY ALI GEREMIA
Robyn Ferrell was brilliant, eloquent and funny during her May TT Public talk, 'Creative Nonfiction and the Genre of the Thesis.' She focused on two or three different themes.
One was the linguistic history, i.e. J. Derrida, W. Benjamin, etc. of genre or 'every day' writing... and pointed out that the institutional forms and administrative tracking systems, i.e., LJMU's eDoc, count as a writing genre. (I am compelled to state that this TT blog format, and within it, the "Reading Diary" format, while much looser than the LJMU system, are other such genre writing examples.)
In reference to the ‘An ambiguous genre,' reading, another of her themes was the 'plaiting,' or braiding together of the creative practice, no matter the format of the expression, with 'dry' or 'boring,' strict academic analysis. The reading and Robyn referenced R. Barthes essays as a successful forerunner of the plaiting of the two.
She described a combination of methods used in one of her own writings as an example of 'fictocriticism,' which I asked about, as an effective application or theoretical method as one possible approach to synthesize creative (writing) with the academic thesis.
She commented that those who write a creative or practice-based dissertation/exegesis/thesis tend to fall into one of two categories...they are either wildly successful, or a total failure, and no one typically submits a creative based exegesis that is 'in-between.'
