Critical-Creative Studies Initiative

The Critical-Creative Studies Initiative (CCSI) is an initiative  that fosters new and existing courses that help build bridges between literary scholarship and creative writing. The primary activity of CCSI is to enhance the overall undergraduate curricular offerings of the English Department. 

The program was inaugurated in 2025 under the direction of Professor Peggy Phelan, the inaugural director of the CCSI. Courses are taught by former Jones Lecturers in the Creative Writing Program as well as by current lecturers and faculty members in the English Department who are primarily interested in how literary texts are made and what that making suggests about the history and style of human art. Students will be invited to consider how their own creative and critical writing might be enriched by a more direct dialogue between both aspects of their work. 

CCSI courses are not simply creative writing courses with a bit of critical theory; nor are they scholarly courses that stir in a few workshops. Rather, CCSI courses develop a hybrid pedagogy that brings explicit attention to how literature is made, what is meant by literary form, and how our interest in that form changes over time. For example, if an assignment enables students to write “in the style of” a great writer then this creative act will also grapple critically with what is both illuminated and obscured by such efforts.