“Kairotic Connections” is a qualitative pre-pilot study of how creative writing pedagogies foster writer identity and connectivity, how creative writing and rhetoric/composition pedagogies intersect in creative writing and first-year composition courses, and what creative writing as a discipline can bring to rhetoric/composition and vice versa.
Building from a foundation of the rhetorical and creative concept of kairos--the convergence of right time, right place, right audience, right words in the right way to produce the desired effect, the project posits writers' relation to self, to craft, and to the surrounding world as a fundamental, intrinsic condition for them to be or become good writers. The first portion of the study focuses on writer identity and situatedness as university-level creative writing faculty and graduate instructors in interviews and surveys identify the traits and skills of good writers and emphasize the importance of writers' being connected to the places and people around them. The second portion focuses on pedagogical approaches as the faculty and instructors discuss how their assignments and in-class writing exercises help students in creative writing and/or composition courses to achieve or develop the necessary skills and connections. By examining these assignments and writing exercises (especially the ones creative writing instructors use in their academic writing courses), this study notes the intersections between creative writing and composition pedagogies and considers what the two disciplines and, consequently, the students might gain from pedagogical crossovers in writing courses.
