Creative Process 2- Day Workshop
for Graduate Students, January 10-11 2015
Work on your creative process in this unique workshop for graduate students with Prof. Anita Chari
Those of us who have chosen a career in the intellectual realms face common creative process issues that are hardly ever named as such within the container of the academic programs in which we are trained. Producing a dissertation or thesis is a creative process, as it involves creating an original piece of writing. As such the dissertation writing process bears features that are common to all creative processes. Because we typically receive so little mirroring and counseling around common process issues that are fundamental to creating something, we often experience the creative process in our writing and graduate work symptomatically—through procrastination, writer’s block, a feeling of inauthenticity, the inability to share our work with others at key moments, boredom, and running away from our chosen topic. Yet when viewed from a process perspective, these issues can be experienced within the context of a sequence of unfolding that ultimately has integrity and potency. This workshop will provide a framework for understanding creative issues that arise in graduate work proactively and in the context of your own sense of purpose for becoming a scholar. Through experiential activities, writing exercises, mindfulness work, somatic work, and dialogue, you will receive specific feedback about your own creative challenges and strengths and techniques for working through these issues in ways that are meaningful to you personally. The workshop will be tailored to highlight issues specific to participants' needs. This workshop will focus not on problem solving, but on coming to see our intellectual work as a sensuous process of exploration. We come to know the impulse to do academic work as the creative impulse that it is, and to explore that impulse rather than to starve it. You will leave the workshop with a clear understanding of the specific areas of your creative process that are presenting a challenge to moving forward with your current project, and you will leave with specific techniques, practices and support for addressing those challenges, which we will practice in the workshop itself. I personally have found this work extremely valuable for building a foundation for a sustainable and meaningful creative life as an intellectual and am grateful to be able to share this work with others.
Further information
This workshop is open to graduate students in all fields and at any level of study, including students in creative or non-writing-based fields. It is also open to those who have recently completed graduate work. The group will be limited to 7 participants. Please email anitachari@gmail.com to register.
Cost: $100 due upon registration to hold your space. You may pay with check, paypal, or Google wallet.
Location: TBD in Eugene, Oregon
Please bring an unlined sketch pad and a pen. Feel free to bring a lunch if you'd like. There will be a 75 minute lunch break each day.
Bio
Anita Chari is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. She is the author of A Political Economy of the Senses, forthcoming at Columbia University Press, 2015. Her research interests include critical theory, the politics of embodiment, affect theory, and contemplative studies. She draws from a diverse palette of techniques in her teaching, including embodiment process work, Continuum movement, transformative pedagogies, yoga, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, as well as other creative process methods.
Email: anitachari@gmail.com
Website: http://polisci.uoregon.edu/profile/anitac/