The Science Studies Research Cluster invites you to join us for The Science Studies Creative Writing Workshop:

Science Studies teaches us that narratives, tropes, figures, genres, and writing styles matter in knowledge-making practices.  For example, in “The Egg and the Sperm,” Emily Martin argues that staging human fertilization as a fairy tale starring active, aggressive, masculine sperm and receptive, passive , feminine ova has both political and epistemological consequences.  Although we have become very good at identifying these narrative elements in the stories of others, we do not often address the aesthetics and politics of our own storytelling practices.  Due to time constraints and academic convention, we rarely have the opportunity to  try out different styles of writing.

With this in mind, the UCSC Science Studies Research Cluster presents “The Science Studies Creative Writing Workshop.”  We invite Science Studies scholars (broadly construed!) to submit a short manuscript (<600 words) that presents your research in a style or genre that differs from your regular academic work.  The workshop includes a roundtable where we will discuss each piece in detail, while discussing strategies for using, playing with, and subverting academic conventions.  We offer this workshop as an opportunity to explore creative approaches to writing, not in service of the “innovative” or “avant-garde,” but as a practical experiment in the political aesthetics of writing.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please e-mail Martha Kenney (mkenney@ucsc.edu) by March 25 to reserve your spot. Mini-manuscripts will be due April 29. 

This event is funded by the Center for Cultural Studies.  Staff support is provided by the Institute for Humanities Research.