Knowledge-Making from a Postgraduate Writers' Circle

Knowledge-Making from a Postgraduate Writers' Circle

A Southern Reflectory

By Lucia Thesen
Paperback $39.95 Hardcover $139.95

$39.95

Publication Date: 11th June 2024

This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university.

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This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university.

 Read More
Description

This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university by juxtaposing the messiness and deletions of the writing process with the hegemonic imaginary of what research writing should look like. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university. The book engages with growing global interest in the geopolitics of research writing and its relationship to patterns of epistemic privilege, drawing on current work on decolonising knowledge production. It opens a space to widen and deepen how we imagine the relationship between writing and knowledge-making.

Details
  • Price: $39.95
  • Pages: 166
  • Publisher: Channel View Publications
  • Imprint: Multilingual Matters
  • Series: Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation
  • Publication Date: 11th June 2024
  • Trim Size: 6.15 x 9.2 in
  • ISBN: 9781800419599
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    REFERENCE / Research
    EDUCATION / Higher
    EDUCATION / Adult & Continuing Education
Reviews

Knowledge that makes it to the formal archive (as publication or accepted thesis) is a sanitized myth. The archive’s occlusion of the twists and turns of knowledge-making as well as its premises have deleterious effects, as Lucia Thesen demonstrates. This book interprets two decades of her experience facilitating a writers' circle for postgraduate students. Serious research that is a sheer delight to read.

- Bassey E. Antia, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

In this beautifully crafted text Lucia Thesen offers deep insights into those unseen aspects of knowledge-making, the ‘back stuff’ of postgraduate writing. She immerses the reader in the ‘extra-textual’ life surrounding writing, through a visceral journey into the ‘swampy space’ of a postgraduate writers' circle. With its deep ethnography and interwoven theoretical resources, this book provides a fresh way of reimagining research writing.

- Cecilia Jacobs, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

This book offers conceptual insights about understanding the interplay between academic literacy growth and its ecological complexity within tension-filled social dynamics. It also shows how to integrate the narrative presentation of such complexity in academic writing as a form of knowledge-making dialogue. These accounts can serve as a resource for researchers of doctoral literacy education and academic discourse socialisation. They may also inform EAP writing instructors about hands-on activities which can be adopted to cultivate students’ self-awareness in research conceptualisation and written communication.

- Keru Li, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China, Educational Review, 2024
This book celebrates epistemic messiness, the serendipity of ideas and insights, and the leftover traces of pedagogic practice. It lends credibility to emotional experience of both writing student and writing teacher, which is mirrored stylistically in the intermingling flow of thoughts and feelings, often lyrical in texture. The book is rich in theoretical perspective, with insights from influential authors from both the global North and South. A stimulating read for practitioners and researchers in academic literacies.
- Joan Turner, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Author Bio

Lucia Thesen is Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is the co-editor (with Linda Cooper) of Risk in Academic Writing: Postgraduate Students, their Teachers and the Making of Knowledge (Multilingual Matters, 2014).

Table of Contents

Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Writers’ Circle as a Portal to Knowledge-Making           

Chapter 1. A Threshold Space of Difference: Introducing the Thursday Circle       

Chapter 2. The Yellow Folders Draw Me In: Looking for the Trace            

Chapter 3. Surface Tension: Writing in the Shadow of the God View        

Chapter 4. HA HA HA: Shaking the Tree of Language

Chapter 5. One Word at a Time: Finding Rhythm in Writing         

Chapter 6. Punctuating the Flow: Reflections from Beyond the Circle      

Chapter 7. ‘I remember a few rogue popcorns’: Teaching for the Trace (with Clement Chihota and Aditi Hunma)

Conclusion: Knowledge-Making at the Water Point

References

Index

This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university by juxtaposing the messiness and deletions of the writing process with the hegemonic imaginary of what research writing should look like. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university. The book engages with growing global interest in the geopolitics of research writing and its relationship to patterns of epistemic privilege, drawing on current work on decolonising knowledge production. It opens a space to widen and deepen how we imagine the relationship between writing and knowledge-making.

  • Price: $39.95
  • Pages: 166
  • Publisher: Channel View Publications
  • Imprint: Multilingual Matters
  • Series: Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation
  • Publication Date: 11th June 2024
  • Trim Size: 6.15 x 9.2 in
  • ISBN: 9781800419599
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    REFERENCE / Research
    EDUCATION / Higher
    EDUCATION / Adult & Continuing Education

Knowledge that makes it to the formal archive (as publication or accepted thesis) is a sanitized myth. The archive’s occlusion of the twists and turns of knowledge-making as well as its premises have deleterious effects, as Lucia Thesen demonstrates. This book interprets two decades of her experience facilitating a writers' circle for postgraduate students. Serious research that is a sheer delight to read.

– Bassey E. Antia, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

In this beautifully crafted text Lucia Thesen offers deep insights into those unseen aspects of knowledge-making, the ‘back stuff’ of postgraduate writing. She immerses the reader in the ‘extra-textual’ life surrounding writing, through a visceral journey into the ‘swampy space’ of a postgraduate writers' circle. With its deep ethnography and interwoven theoretical resources, this book provides a fresh way of reimagining research writing.

– Cecilia Jacobs, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

This book offers conceptual insights about understanding the interplay between academic literacy growth and its ecological complexity within tension-filled social dynamics. It also shows how to integrate the narrative presentation of such complexity in academic writing as a form of knowledge-making dialogue. These accounts can serve as a resource for researchers of doctoral literacy education and academic discourse socialisation. They may also inform EAP writing instructors about hands-on activities which can be adopted to cultivate students’ self-awareness in research conceptualisation and written communication.

– Keru Li, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China, Educational Review, 2024
This book celebrates epistemic messiness, the serendipity of ideas and insights, and the leftover traces of pedagogic practice. It lends credibility to emotional experience of both writing student and writing teacher, which is mirrored stylistically in the intermingling flow of thoughts and feelings, often lyrical in texture. The book is rich in theoretical perspective, with insights from influential authors from both the global North and South. A stimulating read for practitioners and researchers in academic literacies.
– Joan Turner, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Lucia Thesen is Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is the co-editor (with Linda Cooper) of Risk in Academic Writing: Postgraduate Students, their Teachers and the Making of Knowledge (Multilingual Matters, 2014).

Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Writers’ Circle as a Portal to Knowledge-Making           

Chapter 1. A Threshold Space of Difference: Introducing the Thursday Circle       

Chapter 2. The Yellow Folders Draw Me In: Looking for the Trace            

Chapter 3. Surface Tension: Writing in the Shadow of the God View        

Chapter 4. HA HA HA: Shaking the Tree of Language

Chapter 5. One Word at a Time: Finding Rhythm in Writing         

Chapter 6. Punctuating the Flow: Reflections from Beyond the Circle      

Chapter 7. ‘I remember a few rogue popcorns’: Teaching for the Trace (with Clement Chihota and Aditi Hunma)

Conclusion: Knowledge-Making at the Water Point

References

Index