The Programmatic Era: Creative Writing as Cultural Imperialism

In recent years, creative writing has spread far beyond its origins in the Anglophone higher education institutions of the Global North. This essay positions Mark McGurl’s much-lauded The Program Era in the global(-ized) arena and asks how, why, and to what end the creative writing program might influence global literary production, given the cultural and historical particularity of its teaching models and craft devices. The essay moves beyond a discourse on pedagogy to draw on wider debates around cultural and linguistic imperialism as well as literary production in the global marketplace. It uses the key example of the subject’s recent expansion into China and focuses on the “workshop model,” writing anthologies, and “plot” as it is articulated in canonical writing guides. The essay argues that the subject must better articulate its historical and cultural particularities. If it does not, it risks enacting a form of cultural imperialism on the production of future world literatures and limiting the potential for experimental writing in a globalizing world.