Word by word, story by story: creative writing as a method in a geography classroom

Abstract

Building on a plethora of critical feminist geographic scholarship which employs creative methods as a means to counter knowledge hierarchies and to re-think modes of geographic knowledge production, this paper proposes a more substantial engagement with creative writing in geography, reflecting on a class in which geographic research, literary texts, and storytelling were brought into conversation. The aim is to show that this triad is valuable (1) to situate storytelling in geography and see it as a way of “doing” geography in the everyday, (2) to deconstruct and reimagine various geographic themes through literary encounters, and (3) to voice personal place stories in a safe space. By using creative writing as method, students were able to explore their creative potential while also improving their writing skills and employing geographic themes such as home, place, and belonging. The short creative texts the students produced centered on issues such as migration, resistance, and environmental change, underscoring the multitude of ways to engage with and to feel for a place. The paper is thus also a (re)consideration of how as geographers or “earth-writers” we can use our creative potential in the classroom to engage differently with our students and the topics we study.

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