Generative Encounters: Routes into experimental academic writing

Settle into what words ask.
Be with what hooks.
Notice what pulls you in.
Watch out for what holds.
Feel out what happens within a sentence.
Carry writing lightly.

Inspired by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s The Hundreds (2019) a group of staff and students in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds have met many Wednesdays to read 100 words and to write in response.

Over the two years, members have brought for us to read together: Donna Haraway, Lesley Stern, Nigel Thift, Michel Foucault, Fred Moten, Hayden Lorimer, Anna Tsing, Rose Bird Van Dooren, Timothy Morten, Janine MacLoed, Carolyn Ellis, Marisol de la Cadena, Bruno Latour, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mieke Bal, Monica Huerta, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Gloria Anzaldúa.

Bringing the activities of our group to a close, this event marks the end of the Hundreds Reading and Writing Group project. It also extends an invite to friends-to-be to embark with us on speculative adventures in close reading and writing that we hope will continue to unfold beyond the session.

We welcome and would like to meet…

people compelled by close reading,
the affect curious,
artists who work with writing as a medium,
those innovating in academic form – or might like to,
anyone who reads this and feels a pull of interest

What we hope to create together…

• Close reading and discussion in an open mode – collaborating, building a shared sense, bouncing off, picking up as each other trails
  Strategies for ‘feeling your way in’ (Stewart) and ‘starting in the middle’ (Massumi).
• Cultivating attention to different elements that alone any of us alone might glide over or miss.
• Meetings of minds and missions, we are curious to hear about your writing projects
• Other things that can’t be entirely predicted.

In practice…

• We will read hundreds of words together
• We will write responses that speak to the texts we may encounter (writing can be daunting, so there is no pressure to share what we write)
• We’ll see where this takes us

Booking information

The event will take place online.

Book your place via Eventbrite.

If you are interested in all of this but can’t come, drop us a line via h.graham@leeds.ac.uk so we can stay in touch.

Image

The paving’s depths. The cracks intersecting. Life emerging. Under and between and through the paving, the world. Photo by Helen Graham.