The Creative Writing Domain: Reasoning, Habitat and Benefaction

Award

PhD Research Studentship

Supervisors/Schools:

Professor Graeme Harper (School of Creative Studies and Media)
Dr Robert Pope (School of Theology and Religious Studies)
Dr Helen Abbott (School of Modern Languages)

Description of Project:

The project combines practice-led research (as primary investigative mode) with critical research into habitat formation and benefaction in the domain of Creative Writing – with a particular emphasis on the relationship between the undertaking and understanding of creative action (eg. creative practice) and the habitual formations that support and develop it. The critical response in this project will encapsulate an investigation into European creative domains (both historical and contextual), and approach this relationship through models suggesting responsive critical understanding in arts practices and the analysis of the beneficent activities and metaphysical ideals of creative practice.

The successful PhD student will produce both creative work (ie. Creative Writing) and critical work that draws on the ideas of creative domain creation, and they will undertake this in a way that is in keeping with cutting edge activity, internationally, in practice-led research, informed by critical understanding. That is to say, the project will explore the nature of Creative Writing by undertaking Creative Writing, but also by considering the ways in which Creative Writing practice is assisted by the formation of personal domains, by acts and actions of benefaction or patronage, by imaginative reasoning, metaphysical as well as physical investigation, and by re-creation.

Ultimately the PhD will complete a full length creative work (eg. a novel, collection of short stories, collection of poetry, script) and a critical response of between 20,000 and 50,000 words.

Supervisory Team

Professor Graeme Harper – Professor of Creative Writing has supervised 18 PhDs in Creative-Critical Writing. Examined at c. 40 universities. Chaired committee that wrote the national benchmark for Creative Writing. Creative Writing member of AHRC’s Peer Panel – since 2003 -- sits on PG panel and general panels (Peer College member since ’03). Creative Writing member of the AHRC Steering Committee on Practice-Led Research (‘05-‘08). First doctorate in Creative Writing in Australia (DCA, UTS). Second in Creative and Critical Writing at UEA (PhD). 17 books, c. 100 stories etc. Latest works: On Creative Writing (2010), Camera Phone (a novel, 2010). Honorary Professor of Creative Writing at universities in the UK, USA, Australia.

Dr Robert Pope – Reader in Contemporary & Applied Theology has published on creative practices and theology (eg. Salvation on Celluloid, Theology, Imagination and Film, Continuum, 2007). Among current projects is an investigation in to the role of the imagination in eschatology. Also has interests in examining the nature of religious experience. Other interests, especially those in non-conformity, bring a distinctive viewpoint to the study of benefaction and creative action, highlighting the refusal to accept doctrines or to follow practices – a philosophic/theological position in keeping with that often touted in the realm of creative independence. An experienced postgraduate supervisor and manager, being Head of the School of Theology and Religious Studies.

Dr Helen Abbott – Lecturer in French studied French at KCL, working on authors as varied as Montaigne, Boileau, and Baudelaire. Thesis: The Aesthetics of Voice in the works of Baudelaire and Mallarme. Has particular interests in rhetoric, poetics, music and aesthetics 1850-1950. Co-organised a colloquium entitled Transpositions of Thought and Form in the Nineteenth Century and Beyond, looking into the various domains that nineteenth-century French poetry infiltrates and influences (in particular poetry and the visual, the ethical, the musical, the official). Set up and won a bid to host the first Leverhulme Trust Artist-in-Residence scheme award ever awarded to Bangor (with creative performer, Sholto Kynoch).

For full details of the terms and conditions of this award see

Queries prior to a formal application concerning this research project should be addressed to:
Professor Graeme Harper (School of Creative Studies and Media): graeme.harper@bangor.ac.uk
Dr Robert Pope (School of Theology and Religious Studies) : r.pope@bangor.ac.uk
Dr Helen Abbott (School of Modern Languages) : h.abbott@bangor.ac.uk

Application:

The application deadline is noon on Friday 30 April 2010. For more information on how to apply, please visit here

Applicants will be contacted during the month of June 2010 with information relating to their submissions.