Establishing Creative Writing as an Academic Discipline in the Higher Education Sector of Pakistan

Abstract

At various points in their thought processes, researchers often probe deep into the justification for particular research. A recurrent question that one frequently comes across has to do with the motivation to follow a path that may not only be relatively new and almost completely unknown, but could also comprise of dynamics that may or may not necessarily fall under the criteria of current research practice. What do such investigations expect to gain from such research? Could it possibly be to lead to the generation of new knowledge in its respective field? And if yes, than of what kind?For this article, the answers to the above have three justifications: a) The need for research conducted in the field of CreativeWriting Studies as a means to add new dimensions to the scholarly reshaping and a definite grounding of the arena as a proper academic discipline. b) The need to establish CreativeWriting Studies in higher education institutes as a means of fostering a different variety of student learning, where the student works as his own teacher, in his own rights. c) Despite occupying a pertinent place in the Western higher education, the discipline remains to serve as a rather marginalized and an invisible ‘component’ of the Pakistani academic profession. Contrary to the decades-long establishment of a critical pedigree in literary studies and the theoretical landscape of linguistic analysis within the English departments in Pakistan, various research inquiries have been unable to detect a concrete presence of CreativeWriting pedagogy in higher education institutes and universities. Even in instances where the same is not the case, that is institutes wherein the form is practiced as a subject, it appears to be an academic discipline that is hardly ever driven by intellectual rigor, practice oriented innovative work, and is therefore often unreceptive to its own pedagogical structure. Given the context, this article identifies a persistent need for CreativeWriting to be acknowledged as an academic discipline, and establish a strong hold in the university academic circles in Pakistan. Taking the discipline’s micro and macro environment analysis into account, the article will set out to demonstrate how conducting further research in its pedagogy can benefit CreativeWriting as a discipline by adding further knowledge in its context, both within the university sector in Pakistan, and anywhere across the world.