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A blend of memoir and scholarly review, this book explores the kinds of thinking creative writing as a distinctly practical subject makes possible within post-secondary education. Taking the idea that creative writing should be grounded in practice, Lisa Martin explores how the nature of the subject gives permission to think specifically, locally, from one's own position, and in a necessarily limited way – without having one's thinking discounted as lacking rigour as a result. Modelling the deep and essential connection between practice and research in the field, this book considers post-secondary creative writing in its three key aspects – artistic practice, pedagogical practice, and practice-led research – in order to articulate the distinctive contributions creative writing makes to what “thinking” means (and whose thinking gets included). Drawing on Martin's own artistic practice as well as more than a decade of pedagogical experience in creative writing, this book braids together disciplinary history, research-informed autobiographical analysis of artistic practice and pedagogy, and scholarly research in adjacent fields such as creativity studies and educational psychology. Connecting creative writing's central commitment to artistic practice and local, material, embodied thinking with the development of learner-centred pedagogies, Creative Writing in Post-Secondary Education is timely, important and will spark spirited discussion within a debate that has been simmering since the inception of creative writing.

This book is among the first to consider the subject of mad auralities in theatre and performance, asking: what does it mean to hear and listen madly? Drawing widely upon mad studies, critical disability studies, theatre studies, sound studies, queer studies, and critical race theory, it seeks to explore the theatrical relationship between sound and mental health differences by examining a range of case studies in which audience members are immersed in auditory simulations of madness. Ultimately, however, this critical study investigates the shortcomings of simulation as a representational practice, in keeping with the critical tradition of disability studies and mad studies.

“Be the best you can be!” Practically from the moment we are born, we are taught to optimize our lives—to devote ourselves to increasing our productivity and efficiency, which, we are told, will make us happier and more successful. The imperative of constant self-improvement, however, drains us dry even as it promises to build us up.The Creative Self delves into the hegemony of neoliberal self-optimization and turns to psychoanalysis in search of an alternative. In paired chapters, Mari Ruti and Gail M. Newman examine the works of the psychoanalysts Marion Milner and Donald W. Winnicott. They provide deeply personal accounts of how these thinkers resonate with day-to-day life, exploring modes of selfhood that subtly but profoundly resist the lure and escape the trap of competitive individualism. Milner urges us to relinquish the ego in the face of loss and lack, and Winnicott asks us to accept the paradoxes of the self instead of demanding their resolution. Together, their insights help us flourish where neoliberal self-improvement would stifle us. Combining the intellectual, the personal, and the political from two perspectives that converge and diverge in striking ways, this book offers an antidote to transactional individualism and envisions forms of creative living beyond its confines.

'Timely and clearly written, To See In the Dark is a manifesto to solidarity'Stephen Sheehi, co-author of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation'Mirzoeff sharply urges us to divest from a mere spectatorship to a genocide, and insists that we see in relation, in solidarity and as an anti-colonial collective'Simone Browne, author of Dark Matters'Mirzoeff argues incisively for a return to ways of seeing that are grounded in solidarity and resistance'Candice Breitz, video and photography artistTo see Palestine is to see the world. Since October 7th 2023, the forces of racial capitalism and settler colonialism have become all too visible in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. In To See In the Dark, Nicholas Mirzoeff explores how images, and especially video, viewed outside Palestine enabled a dramatic switch in public opinion, leading to a global uprising against the genocide.In this groundbreaking analysis, he connects the personal and the political through his own anti-Zionist Jewishness and its histories of violence. The result is a new collective and anti-colonial way of seeing, intersecting online and embodied experience.Nicholas Mirzoeff is a pioneering figure in the field of visual culture and has written extensively on Jewishness and Palestine. His books include How To See The World, and The Right to Look. He has written for the Guardian and The Nation.