Летняя школа 2018

Department for Discourse and Communication studies, School of Philology of Lomonosov MSU accepts application for XXI Fulbright Humanities Summer School Creative Writing and Curricular Innovation in the Humanities

Lomonosov Moscow State University
NRU Higher School of Economics
Museum-Estate of Leo Tolstoy “Yasnaya Polyana”

27-29 August 2018

Of late, creative writing has been attracting increased attention among educators, particularly at the university level. Traditionally the term has referred to the autonomous discipline of skills and strategies applied to artistic verbal texts. More recently, however, it has come to describe a “contact zone” for collaborative experimentation with writing across the humanities and social sciences. In the latter, creative writing provides students (researchers, in general) the opportunity to express through their writing both their individuality as well as their knowledge. In this “zone” the development of new skills is inextricably linked with personal development. New “writerly competencies” open up new paths to the acquisition and circulation of knowledge.

The possibilities for global trans-cultural humanistic interaction in this area are often impeded by differences among languages as well as literary traditions and conventions. But they also can be significantly facilitated by the universal transmissibility of the creative impulse. New types of international collaboration, academic and other, have sprung up through the medium of creative writing while the concept of translation is coming to be used with ever more frequency as a metaphor for the transference of humanistic knowledge as such.

This year’s summer school aims at collective exploration into innovations that introduce creative writing practices into the professional university-level training of twenty-first century humanists.

What methods are being considered in the US and Europe? What is taking place in Russia, and what (at least for now) is not? What is the landscape of already tried and tested levels, methodologies, and teaching rubrics? Where lie the problems, as well as perspectives and tasks for future enhancements? What lessons from creative writing curricula can serve humanists, as well as students of the socially applied and natural sciences? What new opportunities are being created by the ongoing expansion of creative writing in the media? How and why do these new opportunities inextricably hinge on an expanded understanding of what it means to be culture- and media-literate?

If you have any questions, please contact Summer School coordinators (with regards to your specific question) – see Organizing Committee