CALL FOR PAPERS
Craft, Creativity, Critique Postgraduate Symposium
27 – 28 March 2023 (Department of English, University of Malta)
Craft, creativity and critique are inextricably linked to one another. If creativity points to an
inventiveness in the use of language or artistic style, and craft signals the skill and technique
involved in any creative activity, then might critique be surmised to be the craft of creative
response? After all, all three processes imply the ‘bringing forth’ or ‘occasioning’ of something
into presence. What might in turn be ‘brought forth’ out of a rethinking and reinterpreting of
these three terms?
The practices and routines involved in the production of literary texts and other forms of creative
expression are diverse. They include different forms of writing and re-writing, reading and
re-reading, revising and editing – ongoing hybrid processes of production and reproduction
through which one finds and hones one’s style and method. The act of creation is an
intellectually and affectively charged activity that may bring to mind the lone artisan, labouring in
a room, surrounded by the tools of their trade – a romantic notion, perhaps, of the artist
requiring mastery, liberty, and solitude. But is creativity not also affected by contextual factors:
by tradition, culture, history, sociopolitics, ideologies, and technologies? And how do these
factors shape the process of writing and our understanding of literature? What do we include
and exclude in the phrase ‘creative writing’?
Beyond aesthetic and stylistic innovations, literature can also challenge the status quo by calling
into question and critiquing hard-wired ‘truths’ and social injustices. In the words of Margaret
Atwood, ‘a word after a word after a word is power’ – and the same can be said of other
non-linguistic forms of cultural production. Craft, creativity, and critique are products of historical
periods and contexts, but they equally also produce these contexts. It is this productivity – of
texts and contexts, of ways of reading and writing, of crafting, creating and critiquing – that we are
interested in here.
The symposium welcomes postgraduate submissions related but not limited to the following:
• The entanglement of craft, creativity, critique, and their relative value
• Genres and beyond
• The artist as critic, the critic as artist
• Creative writing
• Creative criticism
• Journals/Diaries
• Craft and transmedia
• NaNoWriMo and other collective writing projects
• Digital forms of artistry
• Crafting and creativity in language use
• Reading as a critical/creative act
• Revolution, subversion, and dissent
• Creativity and critique in cancel culture
• Negative vs affirmative forms of critique
• Craft and critique in/of cultural myths
• Intersectionality and representation
• Text, intertextuality, context, and recontextualization
• Originality, authenticity, convention, talent, and inspiration
• Self-reflexivity, self-crafting, and self-critique
• Craft/creativity/critique as process vs product
The symposium also welcomes creative works that attempt to engage with the theme and its
different interpretations.
Proposals of around 250 – 300 words, accompanied by a brief biographical note not exceeding
100 words, should be sent to englishpgsymposium@um.edu.mt by 12 February 2023.
