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An intimate circle : reflections on writing as women in higher education
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Abstract:
An extensive body of literature on writing circles or groups in higher education for doctoral students, and increasingly early career researchers, focuses on supporting emerging scholars to develop research capability. This literature has explored the history of writing groups for student learning, pedagogies of writing groups and principles for effective operation—including identification as writers, peer review, community building and establishing the business of writing as everyday practice. Only in passing, however, does this body of work address the gendered membership of writing circles. Where the gender of participants is indicated, the groups discussed in the literature consist predominantly of women members. Lee and Boud (2003), for example, do not identify participants but note in the acknowledgements that one of the writing groups published a paper in the proceedings of a conference focussing on women and university culture. Five of the six members in Lassig et al. (2009) are women. Aitchison and Lee are more explicit, stating: “All group members were women in the mid-stages of their career” and noting the shared points of identification this offers (2006: 272). More commonly, however, the heterogeneity of the group is emphasized, despite the predominance of women: “we are birds of very different feathers [with] varying backgrounds, motivations and research interests” (Paternak et al. 2009: 361). Although there are published examples of women writing together (Galligan et al. 2003; Dwyer et al. 2012), there is little discussion of experiences as women writers in these contexts. This chapter builds on our previous reflective evaluations on learning in a writing group context (Bosanquet et al. 2012) to examine our practice as women writers in higher education. What does it mean to write as women and among women? How do writing circles support women to develop academic writerly identities? The discussion brings together feminist theory and pedagogy on writing as women and scholarship on intimacy and affect. Our reflections reveal the multitude of roles and myriad of identities that we perform as writers and women; enabling these observations is the protected space of our intimate writing circle. ; 14 page(s)
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URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/328748
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From speed dating to intimacy : methodological change in the evaluation of a writing group
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