Week 9: Writing With(out) a Net
Slowly catching up...

Why No Love for the C-Dub?

I was looking at erin_728's entry for week 9 to get some inspiration. I do want to talk about distance learning when it applies to creative writing, specifically low-residency MFA programs, which are on the rise. I tried to bring it up in class during week 9 but didn't feel as though people were interested. Oh well, I guess part of the reason for that is that I'm the only one currently in an MFA program...

Why are low-res MFAs on the rise? Maybe because they can charge tuition but don't necessarily have to give any kind of assistantship. Another reason seems to be that working people want to get an MFA but don't want to give up their jobs, the same reason lots of people choose distance learning. But the MFA is different in some ways. Because the MFA is a terminal degree, it seems that some people want it so they can teach. But there are lots of people getting MFAs in low-res programs that have no intention of going into the academy--they just want instruction from academy-trained writers. Being a grad student in CW online means that you can dodge a lot of pedagogical and administrative work and take yourself in a large part out of the materiality of the academic environment. I know that academic spaces persist online. However, that you as a student are not a laboring body for the academy puts you in a unique position of choosing how deep into the academy you want to go. Can online spaces such as these change the way MFA programs work? Can they change who gets preferential treatment in these academic spaces? Can they change the way the term "academic writer" is defined?

The Academy Is a Battlefield, Baby

All writers in MFA programs are ostensibly academic writers, but not all are "career academics." I think that it is probably apparent who is a career academic in one of these low-res programs versus who is a "civilian" (my term for someone in a non-academic career field). There are clues in speech, dress, mannerisms, attitude...and use of technology, maybe (how would a civilian use academy technology in an academic space? interesting question, to me at least). It seems to me that there might be some amount of prejudice from academics toward civilians in the F2F discussions, workshops and such that might take place during those "residency" times in the program. We academics are a snotty lot (I include myself as a snot, of course).

Erin listed this quote from the "Virtual Peer Review" reading: "In using the word 'filter,' Lea and Spears remind us that social cues are not eliminated in virtual environments (as critics might argue) but that they are reduced" (43). I was thinking that the online environments of low-res MFA programs might be places where less discrimination takes place...but I know better than that, now. Certainly there's a lot of racism/sexism/homophobia in our MFA programs to some degree: You, woman, must write the woman/feminist poem. You, Asian, must write the "being Asian" poem. You, gay, must write the "being gay" poem. But could a low-res program be one of the safer havens for women and minorities if social cues are reduced? I guess that, by saying such a thing, I'm assuming that reduced social cues necessarily mean mitigated discrimination...

If the above quote applies to civilians versus academics, does academic on civilian discrimination (and vice versa, I suppose) exist in distance education? I would really like to know. Is there some kind of study on this? Is this all in my head? I'd love to talk to some non-academy writers like Lola Haskins (my new hero), and "civilian" low-res MFA students about this.

Can you tell I'm very ambivalent about continuing in the academy? Geez....what's with all this anger? :)