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Presented by Macquarie University’s School of Social Sciences, in partnership with the Imagined Lives research collective, Sydney Review of Books, and the Centre for Applied History.
Join us for a special event which brings together scholars, creative writers and publishers to discuss the practices, challenges and affordances of ‘writing out from the academy.’
Program
1.30pm-2.30pm Session One
‘The ethics and aesthetics of social science research.’
Panel discussion: Lisa Wynn, Kirsten Bell, Randa Abdel-Fattah, and Kate Rossmanith
2.30pm-3pm: Afternoon Tea
3pm-4pm: Session Two:
‘The generalised essay’
James Jiang (editor, Sydney Review of Books), with Christian Gelder and Kate Rossmanith
Over the past several decades, more and more academic researchers are using different forms of writing as part of their scholarly practice. They are producing novels, short stories, nonfiction monographs, memoir, biography, literary journalism, essays and poetry. These writing innovations have been driven by the reflexive turn in the social sciences, the humanities’ interest in questions of subjectivity, artists and writers entering the academy and the acceptance of creative practice research, and, more recently, the expectation that scholars produce ‘approachable’ work that has ‘real world impact’
Researchers working with such forms of writing are confronted by particular compositional and philosophical problems. These include, for example, how to convey ideas and information, how to give dense (plotless) research sufficient momentum for a reader, and how to represent other people, environments, and situations ethically. There is the question too of ‘narratorial presence’: who or what is the ‘voice’ on the page organising and narrating the material? How can the ‘narratorial presence’ be developed to best effect?
Meanwhile, what are publishers looking for? How does an essay, for example, differ from a scholarly journal article? What is the publishing process for a trade book?