RESEARCH

Janelle's research focuses on histories of creative writing pedagogy and labor practices in higher education. Secondary research interests include ecopoetics and environmental writing practices and the relationship between aesthetics and rhetoric. Janelle also serves as the reviews editor for the new Journal of Creative Writing Studies and maintains a creative writing pedagogy bibliography as a resource for the field.  She is currently working on a series of creative writing textbooks and scholarly projects on transformative language arts and postcolonial approaches to creative writing.

Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing

The creative writing workshop has existed since the early part of the 20th century, but does it adequately serve the students who come to it today? While the workshop is often thought of as a form of student-centered pedagogy, it turns out that workshop conversations serve to marginalize a range of aesthetic orientations and the cultural histories to which they belong. Given the shifting demographics of higher education, it is time to re-evaluate the creative writing curriculum and move literary writing pedagogy toward a more inclusive, equitable model.

Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing makes the argument that creative writing stands upon problematic assumptions about what counts as valid artistic production, and these implicit beliefs result in exclusionary pedagogical practices. To counter this tendency of creative writing, this book proposes a revised curriculum that rests upon 12 threshold concepts that can serve to transform the teaching of literary writing craft. 

Additional Links



​Journal Articles
Adsit, Janelle. "Creative writing and the limits of Naming What We Know: threshold concepts from aesthetic theory and creativity studies in the literary writing curriculum." New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing (2017): 1-9.

Adsit, Janelle. "The writer and meta-knowledge about writing: threshold concepts in creative writing." New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing 14.3 (2017): 304-315.

Adsit, Janelle, et al. “Affective Advocacy: Answering Institutional Productions of Precarity in the Corporate University.” Special Issue: Institutional Feelings: Practicing Women's Studies in the Corporate University. Eds. Jennifer Nash and Emily Owens. Feminist Formations 27.3 (Dec. 2015): 21-48. Print.
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​Book Chapters
Adsit, Janelle. "Place-Based Pedagogy and Creative Writing as a Fieldwork Course." Creative Writing Innovations: Breaking Boundaries in the Classroom. Eds. Michael Dean Clark, Trent Hergenrader, and Joseph Rein. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Doe, Sue, Maria Maisto, and Janelle Adsit. “What Counts and What Works: Bringing Affect into 'Effectiveness’ in Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Advocacy and Activism.” Contingency, Exploitation, and Solidarity: Labor and Action in English Composition. Eds. Karen Fitts, et al. Anderson: Parlor P, 2017.

Adsit, Janelle. “Under-representation of Feminist Aesthetics in Creative Writing Craft Texts.” (In)Scribing Gender: International Female Writers and the Creative Process. Ed. Jen Westmoreland Bouchard. Nashville, TN: Diversion P, 2015.

Adsit, Janelle. “An Account of Oneself: Teaching Identity Construction in Creative Nonfiction and Social Media.” Creative Writing in the Digital Age. Eds. Michael Dean Clark, Trent Hergenrader, and Joseph Rein. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. Print.



Reviews (Selected)
“Review: Those Good Gertrudes: A Social History of Women Teachers in America, by Geraldine J. Clifford.” Peitho (Spring 2015).

“Review: Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice, edited by Lisa A. Kemmerer.” ForeWord (Jul./ Aug. 2011). Print.

“Review: The Overseer’s Cabin, by Édouard Glissant.” ForeWord (Mar./Apr. 2011). Print.

“Review: Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture, by Jim Collins.” ForeWord (May/Jun. 2010). Print.

"Review: In an Uncharted Country, by Clifford Garstang." Mid-American Review 30.1&2 (Spring 2010). Print.

“Review: First We Read, Then We Write, by Robert D. Richardson.” Colorado Review 37.1 (Spring 2010). Print.

"Review: The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation." Colorado Review. Web.

"Review: The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman: Volume 1: My People Need Me, June 1918-March 1936, edited by Walter Earl Fluker." ForeWord  (Jan./Feb. 2010). Print.

"Featured Review: Beg, Borrow, Steal, by Michael Greenberg." ForeWord  (Sept./Oct.2009). Print.

​"Review: When to Go Into the Water, by Lawrence Sutin." Book/Mark (Summer 2009). Print.