(Re)Writing Craft : Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies

Tim Mayers explores the nature of the contemporary English department with the intent of drawing connections between the usually separate fields of creative writing and composition studies.

(Re)Writing Craft focuses on the gap that exists in many English departments between creative writers and compositionists on one hand, and literary scholars on the other, in an effort to radically transform the way English studies are organized and practiced today. In proposing a new form of writing he calls \u0022craft criticism,\u0022 Mayers, himself a compositionist and creative writer, explores the connections between creative writing and composition studies programs, which currently exist as separate fields within the larger and more amorphous field of English studies. If creative writing and composition studies are brought together in productive dialogue, they can, in his view, succeed in inverting the common hierarchy in English departments that privileges interpretation of literature over the teaching of writing.