Hidden Purposes of Undergraduate Creative Writing: Power, Self and Knowledge

Abstract

In the United States, one fierce critic of undergraduate Creative Writing taught it for several decades: the late Karl Shapiro (1913–2000), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1945 and professor of Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, the University of Nebraska and the University of California at Davis. He was among the post-World War II generation of writers who joined the academy and developed Creative Writing as a distinct species of English Studies, but as late as 1993, Shapiro was still criticizing the subject: ‘I only wish that Creative Writing would not be confused with education, that it would not try to compete with language and literature training as an equal. ’ Shapiro defended his own participation thusly: