Abstract: In the summer of 2006, during a popular uprising in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, a group of Oaxacan women occupied state television and transformed it into TV by and for the people in just twenty-o...

Abstract: With PhDs in creative writing becoming more valued and valuable in both local and international contexts, the question of models that are fit for purpose has never been more pressing. This paper discusses a case study of an approach to PhD pedagogy underway with writers from across the Asia-Pacific. It is a model of advanced practice-led research in creative writing, which helps established and mid-career writers to deepen their oeuvres and careers. The model poses the question: What if a PhD in creative writing focused its site of research on a practitioner’s ongoing _practice_ as a writer? How might this deepen the practitioner’s engagement with the processes of and contexts for writing, and enable shifts in and for their future writing practice? This paper invites educators and writers to reconsider how a _PhD by practice_ in creative writing contributes new knowledge – on literary approaches, forms, genres and cultures – to the discipline, at the same time as it provides a writer with insights to transform their practice. Faculty and student perspectives of a trans-cultural, multidisciplinary, low-residency program, based in Vietnam and Australia, reveal how this unconventional approach is making a difference to PhD pedagogy and creative practice research.

Abstract: In the discipline of creative writing in Australia, questions of disciplinary identity have previously focused on distinguishing creative writing from literary studies. Fewer have questioned exactly what academics mean when they talk about ‘writing’ as a discipline. When the term ‘writing’ is used synecdochally to mean ‘creative writing’ or ‘writing in a general sense’, other kinds of writing risk becoming invisible or undervalued. This often results in writing programs targeted at fiction and creative nonfiction writers aspiring to publication. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, our collaboration, which we label ‘horizontal mentoring’, across sub-disciplines in writing – creative writing and technical communication – has resulted in fruitful investigations into disciplinary identity. We draw on a reflective practice methodology to answer the questions: how has our collaboration helped us develop a more nuanced understanding of writing? How might this collaboration help advocate for writing in the Australian context? How can our collaboration help develop diverse students as writers? We conclude with a vision for an inclusive and welcoming disciplinary identity and pedagogical practices that engage diverse student cohorts.

Abstract: Chernobyl occupies a complex space in the Western cultural imagination, complicated by science fiction fantasies, crime thrillers, military-style video games, haunting photo installations, and a recent HBO drama series focusing on the nuclear disaster. While the devastation of the reactor is often regarded as a ‘dark metonym for the fate of the Soviet Union’ (Milne 2017: 95), the nuclear crisis is also at the centre of increasing anxieties about the ‘fate of future generations, species extinction and the damage done to the environment’ (93). Indeed, the enormity of Chernobyl, like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima, is often regarded as beyond representation. By examining a range of poems produced by Chernobylites or derived from witness testimonies, we argue that in confronting the unthinkable, poetry is uniquely able to convey the inexpressible and abject horror of nuclear destruction. Further, in considering the potential for commodification in writing about sites of tragedy, we define poetry about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as an example of ‘dark poetry’ – that is, poetry exploring or attempting to imagine or reanimate examples of dark tourism. We specifically explore this example of dark poetry to contend that while it often lobbies for nuclear international cooperation, it can also be read as exploitative and romanticising the macabre spectacle of nuclear explosion.

Abstract: This article examines the ways in which several Korean documentary films in the 2010s use archival footage of the distant or recent histories of Korea. It argues that the films testify to what I ca...

Abstract: The objective of this article is to define the archetypal features of a television anti-heroine to aid screenwriters with the scripting of their own anti-heroine teleplay. Once this has been accomplished the article will present additional secondary character archetypes which are specific to the storyworld of the television anti-heroine. It will explore how archetypes offer ‘systems of meaning’ (Pryor & Bright 2008: 74), providing audiences a necessary entry point of comprehension. Ultimately the archetypes presented could be utilised to guide screenwriters as they work to circumvent chaos and fragmentation while crafting the journey of their anti-heroine. Much of the literature centred on archetypal paradigms is heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell’s _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_ and Christopher Vogler’s _The Writer’s Journey_. While these texts are of some use, they are inherently gender biased in favour of the hero. Therefore the vast majority of archetypes are not entirely compatible with the heroine, let alone an anti-heroine. It should be noted that the outcomes of this paper have emerged from the author’s scripting of an anti-heroine teleplay, alongside case study textual analyses. To ensure the credibility of conclusions drawn, the article will first provide a short synopsis of their teleplay, _Angela_.

Abstract: This article focuses the realist text as a sensory narrative image. I propose that realist fiction, or abstracted realism, is an attempt to capture the incompleteness of human experience through carefully crafted narrative detail – interwoven narrative images. The central premise of this article is that productive engagement with our own writing and the work of fellow writers involves paying close attention to the relationship between sensory narrative detail and a focalising consciousness, as a representation of the ideas that lurk beneath the surface of the text. This analysis occurs within the more specific context of dark subject matter in realist writing. Ideasthesia (from neuroscience) and the unthought known (from psychoanalysis) provide a theoretical frame for a broader examination of the relationship between a focalising consciousness and the transposition of narrative detail. Through this frame, and in relation to examples from longand short-form fiction, including my own practice, and with reference to William Maxwell, Marcel Proust, Luke Davies, Arnold Zable, Flannery O’Connor, Edith Wharton, Toni Morrison, as well as Francis Bacon, Charles Baudelaire and Victoria Walsh, this article contemplates the realist text as a sensory narrative image. I track the relationship between form and feeling, both within the narrative world as well as with reference to authorial intention, more broadly.

Abstract: This article analyses a selection of creative projects engaging with Romanian migrant labourers, in relation to the controversy in the UK and in Romania prompted by the Channel 4 television series ...

Abstract: The question of whether artistic practice might be construed as a research practice is one that has been pursued extensively since the 1990s. Much in the discourse remains open to contention, though a degree of consensus has emerged on certain key themes: that art is indeed productive of knowledge, that this knowledge is to be understood experientially and non-conceptually, but that it must be framed in a form consistent with established academic procedures. Jen Webb’s several contributions to this discourse provide a valuable context for considering whether it may be possible to overcome the conceptual and practical separation between art and the academy. Using Webb’s work as a frame, this article engages with the debate about the knowledge status of art through a consideration of its contradictions, and suggests that a pragmatic solution is to be found in the operations of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), which now accepts the research credentials of creative writing as being self-evident.

Abstract: This article considers Jane Arden’s 1972 film The Other Side of The Underneath, a neglected work of British feminist experimental cinema that focused on experimental group therapy. Building upon th...

Abstract: In this interview, the members of Abounaddara, a collective of self-taught and volunteer filmmakers from Syria, discuss their work in relationship to their commitment to an artisanal mode of produc...

Abstract: Though their cultural births coincided, punk and rap musicians performed in New York City for at least seven years before they endeavoured any substantial creative interactions. Musicians, critics,...

Abstract: In late 2016 Deakin University’s School of Communication and Creative Arts (SCCA) added the PhD by Prior Publications in the Creative Arts (Portfolio Creative Product plus Exegesis) to Deakin’s existing complement of PhD by Publication offerings. Candidates from several Creative Arts disciplines, pre-eminently Creative Writing, have enrolled in the PhDPriorPubs. Commencements have included nationally and internationally based artists, including some current Deakin staff members. This article contextualizes the PhDPriorPubs’ origins, describes its inner workings, and provides data on candidate enrolments, graduations and thesis outcomes as of November 2019. It also elaborates on the planning and thinking stages behind the degree’s development, its relationship to the cognate Practice-Led Research methodology, and future prospects and threats. The present-day relevance of PhDs by prior publication is sometimes disputed. This article argues for the ongoing value of degrees like the PhDPriorPubs in pollinating ‘PhD of the Future’ debates and in advancing industry engagement and social justice outcomes in the doctoral degree (research).

Abstract: I examine cases of activist aesthetics in the artistic acts, practices, and works related to contemporary political and social activism of progressive and left-wing movements and groups in the post...

Abstract: Current conditions of global climate change, fossil fuel exhaustion, economic precarity, and political unrest may be indicators that modern industrialised society is on the verge of Collapse. What ...