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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, we organised an event called ‘Generative Encounters: Routes into experimental academic writing’ (23rd September 2022) to mark the end of the Hundreds Reading and Writing Group project.

We also wanted to use the event to extend 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.

The event was structured around different types of activity – here we offer a reflection on what we did.

Reflections on the event and emerging writing groups

Welcome and introductions

Sessions 1, 2 & 3

Emerging Writing Groups

Image

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