Visited the School of Drama Performance and Cultural Industry of Leeds University. Visiting abroad is different from studying for a master's degree abroad. Let me talk about visiting abroad. Simply put, it is to take a few classes and follow the teacher to do some topics. No credit.
During my visit, I realized three differences:
The first difference is the small class. I took two courses, one was "Story Writing Workshop", about 15 to 20 people, and everyone wrote short stories together; The other is "radio writing", which writes copywriting for British radio. The form of class is small class teaching, but it is actually a workshop. 20% of the time is the teacher's talk, and 80% of the time is everyone's discussion, games, or going to the radio to do exercises, going to the theater to see plays, watching movies and so on. , the application is high and there are many discussions.
The second difference is that the social background of students is very different. Some are married, and some go back to study for a degree after working for many years; Some are Latinos, some are blacks and some are Middle Easterners. The gap between the rich and the poor is also very large. Therefore, when we discuss together, there will be many sparks of inspiration, which is very beneficial to novel and drama writing.
The third difference is that foreign teachers have practical experience in the industry and do related work. For example, many teachers work in performing arts companies or theaters, and my teacher is a playwright. However, most teachers majoring in humanities and arts in China only write papers and have some academic achievements. For example, teachers in advertising and Chinese departments may have never worked in an advertising company or worked as professional writers themselves.
Creative writing originated in America in the 1920s. At that time, American universities and our universities in China had the same problem: liberal arts (especially their English departments) paid special attention to the teaching of grammar, spelling and literature history, and trained a large number of critics and linguists, but students' writing ability was very weak. Therefore, the University of Iowa has carried out a higher education reform, mainly cutting off those Latin classic reading courses and those courses that pay too much attention to grammar and spelling, and increasing the proportion of writing courses. Their writing class begins with poetry writing. By 1936, the University of Iowa had established the first master's degree in creative writing in the United States, which marked the official appearance of "creative writing" as a major and discipline.
The core idea of creative writing is that creativity can be cultivated, so can writing, and writers can be systematically cultivated.
After World War II, the United States brought creative writing into the postwar cultural policy, lowered the entry threshold, and trained a large number of writers for the country by vigorously developing creative writing specialty. These writers can speak for these and the society. This is a national cultural welfare policy with a hint of artistic democracy.
As a result, a large number of veterans, Vietnam War veterans and housewives entered the creative writing major of universities and wrote their own lives. This directly contributed to the prosperity of American postwar literature, especially black literature and war trauma literature.
Creative writing has a triple relationship with linguistics and literary studies (literary criticism). Many universities have set up creative writing departments, while others have English departments, tourism schools, management schools, media schools and drama schools.
At present, about 100 colleges and universities in the United States have creative writing majors. From the perspective of the whole world, Canada was probably handed down from the United States in the 1970s. In Britain, creative writing started at 1967. As we know, kazuo ishiguro, the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 20 17, is a creative master of the University of East Anglia (it seems to be the first time). Therefore, the achievements of creative writing major are obvious. Many students in this major have made some outstanding achievements in literature after graduation. Statistics show that 90% of Pulitzer Prize winners and National Book Prize winners in the United States have been trained in creative writing.
The education system of creative writing, apart from the orthodox professional training for obtaining degrees in schools, later developed some writers' own non-profit organizations and some professional writing training.
Teachers are the same all over the world. Teachers are required to be writers who have written works, not necessarily famous, but must have creative experience. You can't write nothing. Pure theory.
Courses ... In fact, creative writing also has theoretical courses, but they are generally applied, and the ultimate training goal is to really write works. Generally, a collection of short stories or a novel should be handed in after graduation; A master's degree requires a little more writing and quality.
There are very few doctoral programs in creative writing in the world, and the awarding of doctoral programs in the United States began to explore slowly after 2000. At present, there are only about twenty or thirty. This is because the cultivation of doctors is very different from that of undergraduates, and academic training is still needed, so some research must be done on creative methods. Therefore, many American universities require doctors to hand in a set of graduation works such as "a novel+a summary+a paper" when they graduate.
In 2009, Mr. Ge (that is, my tutor) came back from a visit to Britain and set up this major in Shanghai University. 20 10 Fudan also opened a master's degree in creative writing, and then Tongji, Peking University and adults mostly opened it. This year, East China Normal University also began to offer a master's degree in creative writing. At present, only Shanghai University has a doctoral program in Chinese mainland.
The graduates of this major have a good development prospect, but at present, there are very few teachers in our country. Most schools don't employ writers as professors and teachers like foreign countries. Schools such as Beijing Normal University, People's Congress and Fudan University will hire writers such as Bi Feiyu and Yu Hua to teach. But they are not tutors, and they only come to school a few times a year, which in essence still does not meet the requirements of creative writing teachers; There are professional resident writers in Beijing Normal University, National People's Congress and Nantah, but they still can't meet the task of writing teaching.
At the same time, the academic research on creative writing in China is still in its infancy. Although creative writing is an applied subject, it also has its own theory and academic system. At present, there is almost only a great emphasis on academic combing in China, such as the history of creative writing in the United States, the teaching methods of creative writing, the theory of creative writing, the writing skills of different styles, the strategy of workshop development and so on. Fudan University and Peking University are still trained in the form of writers' classes or Lu Xun College of Literature. Tongji only recruits on-the-job students.
Once you have mastered the writing ability of a certain style, such as copywriting or a certain novel or a certain script, students can choose to enter advertising companies and film and television companies after graduation. Master of creative writing usually goes to publishing houses, cultural media companies, journalists and TV stations. There are not many full-time writers, but there are many writers' associations. Because after a lot of practice, even if students don't become writers, they can form a complete work when they graduate, and they can directly enter the literary circle through this major.
Shangda cooperated with Wen Yue Group to set up the Master of Arts in Creative Writing Network, but it has not yet started enrolling students, and will explore the degree training of online writers in the future.
Creative doctors generally go to colleges and universities as teachers. After all, there are now 50 or 60 colleges and universities in China that offer undergraduate courses in creative writing, and the number is still increasing, and creative writing teachers are extremely scarce.
Personally, I am optimistic about the development of creative writing major, because after the large-scale enrollment expansion of liberal arts in China, there are too many critics and too many people studying the same writer, but in fact, the society needs more talents with real writing ability to serve the cultural industry and creative industry. This is the future trend.