Merging the Critical and the Creative

This online course highlights artistic practice as research, and the act of creation as a form of knowledge in and of itself.

Students will learn about an approach to research that engages artistic expression, scholarly investigation, curiosity, and experimentation.

Research-creation is an approach to research that engages artistic expression, scholarly investigation, curiosity, and experimentation. In research-creation, the process of creation is integral to the research process. This means that research topics are selected and explored through a creation process, such as the production of a film or video, performance or installation, sound-work (e.g. podcast, sound-walking), zine, or multimedia arts/texts.

Research creation is important in a variety of fields, cultural institutions, and disciplines. In recent years, universities have used it to boost their public profiles and promote community-engaged collaborations. That being said, the increasing institutionalization of research-creation must be approached critically and situated within a broader context of power relations within academia, education, and research. For this reason, in this course, research-creation will be framed as an intervention and invitation for scholars to push disciplinary boundaries, challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about what academic work entails, and consider ways to make their work more sustainable, accessible, and responsive to issues concerning social justice.

Special attention will be given to research-creation projects that critically address the ways in which gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, age, religion, dis/ability, and other intersecting categories of difference shape our experiences of the world. The course will pair reading-based discussions with examples of research creation in practice, and engage with broader discussions concerning methodology, engaged scholarship, and ethics. To this end, this course will include presentations by scholars and practitioners from inside and outside of academia.

By foregrounding lived experiences with research creation in practice, this course aims to highlight the possibilities, as well as the pitfalls, of research creation.

By the end of this course, students will:

• Have a deeper understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of research creation.
• Have a broader perspective on research methods and ways to “go public” with/share research findings.
• Be able to challenge normalized assumptions about how to “do” research.
• Have cultivated a critical perspective of academia, academic research, and collaboration.
• Be able to consider the ethical implications of research-creation and how to go about the research-creation process with care and intention.
• Feel inspired to pursue research-creation within their scholarship.