400012 SE Writing as thinking: Experimenting and working with writing as knowledge practice (2022S)

Writing is integral to academic practice, and something that researchers frequently talk about, feel guilt concerning, and at times struggle with. But its role in knowledge production and dissemination is often taken for granted. In this course students will collectively reflect on the nature of academic writing and experiment with and develop their own writing. Its aim is to assist students to understand what is at stake in academic writing as representational practice, to gain confidence in working with different genres and styles of writing, and to develop their own voice within their research.

While the course will take as its starting point social theory concerning representation, knowledge production, and writing as research practice, the emphasis throughout will be on supporting students’ personal experiments with, and development of, their academic writing. We will experiment with writing in different genres and reflect on ‘good’ writing in our various disciplines, alongside discussing practical techniques that assist us in writing and engaging with different ways in which knowledge has been created, represented, and communicated. Please note that students are expected to have a good grasp of English: this is not a remedial course. Similarly, it will best suit those who are in the analysis and writing up phases of their research, and are who are therefore already in the process of producing texts of different kinds; the course will offer opportunities both to reflect on these texts and to hone them for publication.