Introduction
Esthir Lemi, Ekaterina Midgette and Jessie Seymour
This book is a collection of the peer-reviewed papers presented at the fourth Inter-Disciplinary.net group Global Conference, Writing as Spaces. The conference brought from all walks of life and corners of the world, and the discussions were engaged in writing as a method, as a practice, and as a way of life. We are excited to share this collection with readers who are interested in space as it affects writing and writers.
In Part 1, ‘Meeting the Student and the Self,’ the reader is invited to look deeper into new and traditional forms of writing and their implications for teaching and pedagogy. Writing, be that in the form of an Instagram narrative, a personal reflection, or a story inspired by myths and folktales, is a powerful force that unleashes the creativity of both the author and the reader (regardless of age) and has the potential to originate new forms. The common theme of this section is helping students to find their writing space, discovering the boundaries of individual writing spaces, and ways to transcend them. Sam Meekings, an Assistant Professor of Writing at Northwestern University in Qatar and the author of several novels, explores how writing about physical spaces uncovers the intricate and mutually-dependent relationship between place and memory. Looking at the practices of writers such as W.G. Sebald and Guy Debord as well as the author’s own writing process, Meekings suggests that writing about specific locations is often a way of conjuring ghosts, since place frequently functions in texts as a palimpsest in which different layers of time co-exist.
In contrast, Genevieve Jorolan-Quintero, a researcher, writer and faculty member at the University of Philippines, takes the reader to the vanishing world of the oral tradition and experiences of the indigenous people of Southern Mindanao. The goal of her research is to preserve and cherish the culture and wisdom of these peoples for generations to come. However, in the process of documenting ethno-epics, folktales, and myths, Jorolan-Quintero discovered her own writing space in the form of her own stories inspired by the experiences and the legends of the indigenous community.
Phil Fitzsimmons, an assistant dean at Avondale College in Australia, and Edie Lanphar, a school principal in the United States, take the reader to the world of a middle school classroom to show the effectiveness of the reading-writing connection in helping students to create a personal relationship with the text
Writing as a spiritual space is the main theme of Gail Hammill’ s paper. Hammill teaches literature and composition at the American University in Dubai, uses this paper to discuss the discrepancy between the ability of many writing teachers to inspire their students to create, discover, and reflect through writing, and their own lack of discipline to write. Hammill finds a solution to this dilemma by connecting with her inner spiritually and the spirituality that she found in the writing community of women who bring support and inspiration to fellow writers.
In the final chapter of this section, Ekaterina Midgette, who teaches literacy at the College of Saint Rose in the United States, and Sevil Nakisli, a graduate student of education at the same institution, explore another way to grow writers and connect with the intended audience: through humour. Midgette and Nakisli found that children and adolescents can use unprompted humour to make their persuasive appeal stronger and more engaging. However, humour appears to be underutilized in formal writing instruction despite its well-known potential to capture the recipient in the writing space of persuasion.
In Part 2, ‘Meeting the Master,’ David W. Bulla, a professor of communication at Augusta University in the United States, opens the section with an exploration of Mohandas K. Gandhi’ s life as a writer. Bulla goes deep into Gandhi’ s physical space as he was writing, as well as what and when he wrote, how he saw his writing, and what it meant to him on a spiritual and practical level. Gandhi stated in his autobiography that his responsibility as a journalist was to interact with and serve his readers, so Bulla’ s interest in Gandhi’ s life as a writer is particularly poignant in that regard.
Following on from Bulla, Syeda Hajirah Junaid examines the past and current challenges faced by three generation of writers. Junaid is a freelance researcher with a background in Marketing, and her ancestor’ s contribution to Urdu literature in Pakistan inspired her to write this paper. Junaid’ s chapter explores the different spaces encountered by the three women writers – her great-grandmother, – her mother, and herself – and how these spaces directly or indirectly impacted their output.
Barış Mete, an Assistant Professor of English at Selçuk University in Turkey, reminds the reader of the classical theory that lies behind the writings of an Anglo-Irish novelist-philosopher, Iris Murdoch. His research investigates how
In the fourth paper for this section, Layla Roesler examines the recurring trope of the ‘vrai lieu’ (or ‘true place’ ) Yves Bonnefoy’ s poetry. Roesler, a teacher at at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, explores how Bonnefoy’ s writing allows him to create a communion with the physical – essentially allowing him to create a physical space which is inhabited by symbols, and establishes an imaginary space of the ‘here.’ This ‘here’ is supported by the reader’ s own attention. Roesler’ s work demonstrates how Bonnefoy’ s poetry builds on tools of difference and deixis to spatialize his writing.
To conclude the section, Yadigar Sanli, a freelance researcher and writer based in London, examines the space that Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1878–1960) occupies amongst Islamic scholars in Turkish history. Said Nursi’ s writings span 6000 pages, much of which was produced during an exile where he was kept under observation and stripped of many resources that we contemporary writers take for granted. The limitations of Said Nursi’ s physical space did not prevent him from writing his philosophical interpretations of religious texts – his works straddling the line between academic works and fiction. Sanli explores Said Nursi’ s physical context to draw conclusions about how space-time-material is important to a writer.
In Part 3, ‘Meeting the Artist,’ five chapters unveil patterns on which writing as an artistic act may be “a rightful heir to the scientist and her predecessor” (Nikos Karouzos 1990). Victor Hugo had foreseen, at the broad use of printing press and moveable type, a change in approaching art. We may take for granted the writing and printing process and through digital age, contemporary phenomenological approaches to writing have changed. The introduction of a new generation of scientists-artists may also influence the academic writing. The first two chapters of this section have been written by architects: Panagiota Mavridou and Shelley Smith. Mavridou presents ‘The Movement-Spatiotextual Inscriptions,’ where she uses walking as a tool for creative investigation both on writing and spaces. Mavridou’s paper presents three stages of an open-ended experiment designed to explore, register, expose, and comprehend the creative process of writing as it relates to space.
Smith’s ‘At the Crossroads: Writing Spaces between Academia and Embodiment’, meanwhile, analyses how travels manifest the “commitment of an embodied and sensual response”; a transition between the space of academic writing and an “expressive, sensorial practice.” As academic writing has its strict rules in style, Smith explores the space of the crossroads of her own
Esthir Lemi’ s paper explains the ‘Artist as a Writer’ condition, from the composer and visual artist’ s perspective by linking analogue and digital technology. Lemi argues that in order to preserve visual material, some text needs to be written. She proposes her writing pattern derived from musical composition, which is finalised in the form of a book, presenting her method as a common ground of all arts and the realisation of these ètudes.
In the fourth paper for the section, architect and researcher Nathan James Crane suggests an “expanded spatial practice.” He writes that this, in effect, constructs and cultivates “space for thought” through the process of writing. His paper, ‘Exploring the Written Wor(l)d: Writing as a Spatial Practice,’ develops and elaborates on the concept of writing as spatial practice with particular reference to French Postructuralist writers such as Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida.
Finally, Imogen Lesser Woods introduces ‘The Literary Spaces of Mervyn Peake’s The Gormenghast Trilogy Used as a Foundation for Architectural Exploration.’ Mervyn Peake, an artist, illustrator, poet and writer, produces an imaginative space that we as readers are able to approach. This ability to inhabit literary spaces, not through physical acts but through the potential of the architecture of a narrative, is one of the benefits of the common space of communication that is created by the artistic act of writing, and the pleasure of reading as well.