The Madding Campus: the impacts of heteronormativity, neuronormativity, and class on graduate creative writing education

Abstract

In this dissertation, I set out to examine what may be the experience of neurodivergent/mad/disabled graduate students in low-residency graduate creative writing education and how the workshop model might be reimagined toward a more inclusive instructional space. The dissertation drew on new materialism and mad studies as a theoretical base for the research. Using fiction-based research rooted in autoethnographic inquiry, literature review, imagination, and writing-as-research, I produced a campus novel, The Madding Campus, that explores the intersections of neurodivergence, gender, and class among students in a low-residency Master of Fine Arts program, to examine the narratives sent by and produced in writing education, broaden society's understanding of and disrupt assumptions about who belongs in postsecondary settings, and increase the cultural representation of mad and neurodivergent students. I selected the campus novel for its fit of form to subject, as well as the long history of campus novels as a vehicle for social critique. The dissertation begins with a preface and introduction, followed by the research novel, a recommendations and conclusions chapter, and an autoethnographic essay that served as pre-writing and one of many sources for the project. The Madding Campus draws attention to and asks readers to consider the multiplicity of experiences within graduate creative writing programs and to contemplate ways such programs might operate differently