Talking About Writing: Scenes of Writing Workshops in History and Practice

Authors

Erika Luckert, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Stacey Waite

Department

English

Date of this Version

Spring 2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Comments

Copyright 2024, Erika Luckert. Used by permission

Abstract

This dissertation envisions the writing workshop as a space where we do essential political and social work—where we can reimagine writing, and the teaching of writing, in more interdependent and inclusive ways. This research responds to the work of BIPOC writers and scholars who have urged those of us in Writing Studies to address the homogeneity of the workshop’s history, and to revise its exclusionary logics. Drawing on interviews and observations of teachers in undergraduate creative writing and composition classrooms across the United States, the author examines what actually happens when students talk together about their in-progress writing. This dissertation reveals how workshop pedagogies are shaped by our pasts as students, and considers the ways we might resist or reimagine those pasts. It considers the ways that workshops, which are often framed as a liberatory pedagogy, always involve negotiations between control and freedom, both for educators and for students. And it shows that writing workshops depend upon deeply vulnerable, relational work—work that has radical potential to change the way we think about teaching writing.

Recommended Citation

Luckert, Erika, "Talking About Writing: Scenes of Writing Workshops in History and Practice" (2024). Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–. 70.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissunl/70