Failure Files
By Anne Welsh, on 29 March 2011
PhD student Susan Greenberg has contributed a chapter to The Failure Files(Triarchy Press, 2011). Susan writes:
Among other things, the essay explains the purpose of the critical reflection essay, a key element of most practice-based disciplines in higher education. This form is still not fully accepted in more traditional subjects, but in today’s contested ground of shrinking HE spending, it is more critical than ever to explain and persuade sceptics of its value, and to raise the standard in our own classes. The CRE allows the process behind the practice to be documented, separately from the creative work itself, analysing the choices made and making explicit what would otherwise remain tacit. It is a way of acknowledging the inevitability and value of failure, squaring the professional and educational process which calls for demonstration of ‘research-equivalent’ activity . (‘Knowing what you don’t know’. oddfish, 13 March 2011).
As well as researching acts of editing for her doctorate, Susan teaches on the Creative Writing Programe at Roehampton University, and this latest publication has relevance to all three of the research centres of which she is a member – UCL Centre for Publishing, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and Roehampton’s ReWrite – Centre for Research in Creative and Professional Writing.