Creative Writing as a Way of Knowing Each Other in Digital Spaces

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Affect and the Body: Ways of Knowing, Learning, and Being Present

Abstract

This paper connects and explores two affinity-group writing programs on Zoom within larger arts spaces to lift up the relational and pedagogical structures that make space for student creative learning processes in out-of-school-time spaces, examining creative writing as a way of knowing (Allen, 1995; Hecq, 2015; Kitchen, 2020). We draw on affect theory to trace ways of “feeling literacy through the event” (Ehret, 2018), showing how these spaces developed their own affective systems of engagement. We show how youth developed different kinds of self-knowledge through creation, including what conversations they wanted to be part of in the moment and in the future and the ways that art emerged as a way of knowing each other.

Authors

• Gemma Cooper-Novack, Syracuse University

• Karis Michelle Jones, Empire State College - SUNY