230646 Academic Me, Creative Me (S) (WiSe 2025/2026)

Academic Writing in English Studies differs greatly from creative writing. It is governed by rules, conventions, writing traditions and has its own, discipline-specific goals. And yet, any piece of academic writing, any paper, essay, or thesis, is also invariably and inevitably a piece of creation. It is personal and individual, the product of a unique mind. The voice and critical stance of the writer is a wanted feature in academic writing in literary and cultural studies and this makes academic writing quite a challenge: how do we become visible and audible as the person behind the text without making it lose its academic quality? How can we make an academic text our own, fitting our style, expressing what we value? Can academic writing be creative?
In this class, we will explore all of the above. We will revisit academic writing conventions and ponder how permeable those are, and how and where we as individual writers fit in. We will make room for students' writing endeavours outside of academia and test if those are really so different. Above all, we will write a lot, shorter and longer texts, creative, reflective, unconventional and academic, and we will seek to cross the border between academic and creative back and forth.