After the Program Era: The Past, Present, and Future of Creative Writing in the University

by Loren Glass (Editor)

Overview

The publication in 2009 of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era provoked a sea change in the study of postwar literature. Even though almost every English department in the United States housed some version of a creative writing program by the time of its publication, literary scholars had not previously considered that this institutional phenomenon was historically significant. McGurl’s groundbreaking book effectively established that “the rise of the creative writing program stands as the most important event in postwar American literary history,” forcing us to revise our understanding not only of the relationship between higher education and literary production, but also of the periodizing terminology we had previously used to structure our understanding of twentieth-century literature.

After the Program Era explores the consequences and implications, as well as the lacunae and liabilities, of McGurl’s foundational intervention. Glass focuses only on American fiction and the traditional MFA program, and this collection aims to expand and examine its insights in terms of other genres and sites. Postwar poetry, in particular, has until now been neglected as a product of the Program Era, even though it is, arguably, a “purer” example, since poets now depend almost entirely on the patronage of the university. Similarly, this collection looks beyond the traditional MFA writing program to explore the pre-history of writing programs in American universities, as well as alternatives to the traditionally structured program that have emerged along the way.

Taken together, the essays in After the Program Era seek to answer and explore many of these questions and continue the conversations McGurl only began.

CONTRIBUTORS
Seth Abramson, Greg Barnhisel, Eric Bennett, Matthew Blackwell, Kelly Budruweit, Mike Chasar, Simon During, Donal Harris, Michael Hill, Benjamin Kirbach, Sean McCann, Mark McGurl, Marija Rieff, Juliana Spahr, Stephen Voyce, Stephanie Young
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609384395
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	01/04/2017
Series:	New American Canon
Edition description:	1
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 16.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Loren Glass is a professor of English at the University of Iowa, with a joint appointment at the Center for the Book. He is the author of Authors Inc.: Literary Celebrity in the Modern United States, 1880-1980 and Counter-Culture Colophon: Grove Press, the Evergreen Review,and the Incorporation of the Avant-Garde. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1 Introduction. From the Pound Era to the Program Era, and Beyond Loren Glass

Part I Antecedents

Chapter 1 The Creative Calling Marija Reiff 11

Chapter 2 From Vagabond to Visiting Poet: Vachel Lindsay and the Institutionalization of American Poetry Mike Chasar 21

Chapter 3 Institutional Itinerancy: Malcolm Cowley and the Domestication of Cosmopolitanism Benjamin Kirbach 39

Part II Revisions

Chapter 4 Modernism and the MFA Greg Barnhisel 55

Chapter 5 Flannery O'Connor, the Cold War, and the Canon Eric Bennett 67

Chapter 6 Alternative Degrees: "Works in OPEN" at Black Mountain College Stephen Voyce 85

Chapter 7 Robert Coover, Hypertext, and the Technomodern Pedagogy of Fairy Tales Kelly Budruweit 105

Chapter 8 What We Talk about When We Talk about Lish Matthew Blackwell 113

Chapter 9 Timely Exile: James Alan McPherson, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Black Creativity Michael Hill 123

Chapter 10 The Program Era and the Mainly White Room Juliana Spahr Stephanie Young 137

Chapter 11 Humanities Fiction: A Genre Simon During 177

Part III Prospects

Chapter 12 "My Ghost Life": Russell Banks and the Limits of Aesthetic Democracy Sean Mccann 195

Chapter 13 Getting Real: From Mass Modernism to Peripheral Realism Donal Harris 219

Chapter 14 From Modernism to Metamodernism: Quantifying and Theorizing the Stages of the Program Era Seth Abramson 233

Afterword. And Then What? Mark Mcgurl 249

Contributors 257

Index

Editorial Reviews

Building on the achievement of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, After the Program Era is an outstanding collection of essays that stages a vital and ongoing debate about postwar American literature and the university.”—Evan Brier, author, A Novel Marketplace: Mass Culture, the Book Trade, and Postwar American Fiction


“Mark McGurl’s The Program Era made clear that it is impossible to understand postwar literature without attending to institutions. Glass et al. take this insight in important new directions, discussing such disparate phenomena as the early twentieth-century precursors of the writing program, Cold War diplomacy, and contemporary poetry readings. The case studies are compelling, and the volume as a whole does the vital service of reminding us how much work remains to be done.”—Andrew Hoberek, University of Missouri

From the Publisher