Cirrus@Austlit

'The writing workshop is a core pedagogical practice in the creative writing discipline in higher education and has significant researched benefits to students. As higher education moves increasingly online – a trend that is arguably escalated in response to the impact of COVID-19 – important questions are raised about if, and how, the writing workshop can be delivered online. This paper uses a literature review combined with analysis of small sample of anonymous student feedback about their experiences in one creative non-fiction subject where workshopping was an assessed learning activity. The authors argue that the benefits of face-to-face workshopping can be translated online, and that students may experience higher quality feedback and increased flexibility in participation. However, these benefits are complicated by the increased workload for students and instructors, challenges with digital literacy and unbounded timelines. The paper offers several recommendations for writing instructors facilitating peer workshopping online.'(Publication abstract)

'In Dervla McTiernan’s book, The Scholar, published earlier this year, women are consistently used as the “fall guys” for men with high aspirations. Two young women are killed when they uncover fraud. Another female colleague is then framed for the murders.' (Introduction)

'This article evaluates two web serials: novels published in serialised instalments through digital mediums. John C McCrae’s Worm (2011-2013) was self-published online in the style of a blog, and Stark Holborn’s Nunslinger (2014) was published by Hodder & Stoughton as serialised e-books. This article refers to debates on the publishing industry (Young 2007; Thompson 2012), self-publishing (Young 2014; Tushnet 2017) and digital publishing (Colbjørnsen 2014; Mustafa & Adnan 2017), and applies these to a comparative study of Worm and Nunslinger in order to demonstrate how web serials can engage online fan networks that refashion the forms of capital accessed by established publishing houses. This article concludes that web serials such as McCrae’s work as ‘slow’ media that gain traction over a period of years using word-of-mouth and crowdsourcing through online fan networks.'
 

'This article evaluates rape–revenge narratives in literature, asking how written scenes of rape and revenge depict female bodies without relying on visual representations that replicate evidence-based investigations of the crime. It then examines how authors and readers may seek scriptotherapy through rape–revenge literature, both fiction and memoir. It takes up Elizabeth Grosz's theories of corporeal feminism, feminist criticism on rape–revenge by scholars such as Tara Roeder and criticism on scriptotherapy. Primary texts discussed include novels and memoirs by Barbara Wilson, Y. A. Erskine, Tara Moss, and Alice Sebold. The article positions the rape–revenge narrative through the prism of therapeutic reading and writing, and compares it to the current public responses to sexual assault in Australia. The article determines that rape–revenge narratives in literature are more nuanced than their filmic counterparts. Furthermore, it concludes that memoir can only act therapeutically in a one-on-one sense and has no greater public service to the treatment of rape victims, and is, therefore, no more therapeutic than rape–revenge fantasies.' (Publication abstract)