Hybrid Writing: Literature as

Criticism, Criticism as Literature

Hybrid Writing: Literature as Criticism, Criticism as Literature

University of East Anglia

17.12.16

Call for Papers

Gilbert. […] just as artistic creation implies the working of the critical faculty, and, indeed,
without it cannot be said to exist at all, so Criticism is really creative in the highest sense of
the word.

(Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, 260, in The Major Works, (Oxford: OUP, 2008)

There is a trend in contemporary writing for work which, like Gilbert, interrogates and
challenges the divide between literature and criticism – writing which accounts for the fact
that literary criticism can itself be literary, that the literature it criticises can have a critical
function, and that Creative Writing impels these practices to cohabit in the academy. Whilst
Wilde staged the destabilisation of the literary/critical divide as a dialogue, contemporary
writing goes further, showing performatively how writing can be both. This conference aims
to explore this hybridity through work which interrogates or destabilises the established
demarcation within writing.

Discussing a particular form of this writing, Paul Dawson recently described ‘a textual no
man’s land in which a generic intermingling and hybridity takes place’ (166-7). Whilst there
has always been generic intermingling between criticism and literature, it is marked
particularly strongly in contemporary writing. We think that our ‘textual no man’s land’ of
work which permeates the binary division has been increasingly populated in recent writing,
with notable contributions from writers including Ali Smith, Anne Carson, and Geoff Dyer.
We are calling this ‘Hybrid Writing’. Although there has been some critical attention given to
both individual practitioners of this writing and their particular hybrid texts, there has been
relatively little examination of hybrid writing as a broad tendency. This conference will
create a space in which to remedy this.

We therefore invite proposals for papers from postgraduate and early career researchers in
any discipline which respond to the idea of ‘Hybrid Writing’.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

 Creative criticism, including fictocriticism

 Literary texts with a critical function
 The history of the literary/critical divide
 Theoretical approaches to the literary/critical divide
 The work of contemporary hybrid writers
 The contemporary resonances of pre-twenty-first century hybrid writing

We are also keen to receive proposals for papers on any topic which themselves perform
or exhibit this hybrid quality.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers of 15-20 minutes may be submitted either
through our online form or directly to hybridwritingconference@gmail.com. We also request
a 60 word bio and details of your institution and stage of study.

Further information may be found at hybridwritingblog.wordpress.com

The deadline for submissions is September 13th, 2016.

Contact Info:

Sara Taylor

University of East Anglia

Department of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing

Norwich Research Park

Norwich NR4 7TJ

United Kingdom
Contact Email:
hybridwritingconference@gmail.com
URL:
http://hybridwritingblog.wordpress.com