Episode 50
“I think writing is a form of thinking, a tool of thinking….I think that is sort of defining what we mean by academic, or scholarly, or expository writing. And on the surface it would seem very different from creative writing, where the whole set of associations around creative writing has to do with imagination, often with the idea of tapping into your personal creativity. If you’re writing fiction, you’re imagining situations. If you’re writing a personal essay or a memoir, you’re trying to write about your life in a meaningful way.
But I think really that what creative writing and academic writing do have in common is they’re both different attempts to get at the truth or a truth…”
Brian Pietras is a preceptor in Expository Writing in the Harvard College Writing Program. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Rutgers University. His scholarly articles have been published in The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Renaissance Drama, Spenser Studies, and elsewhere. Brian also teaches Advanced Memoir writing and a Proseminar course at the Harvard Extension School.
Trained as an early modernist, his work on the history of sexuality has led to a new project that investigates queer life in America before Stonewall. Prior to coming to Harvard, he taught in the Writing Program and Freshman Seminars Program at Princeton.
We had the pleasure to speak to Brian about what differences there are (if any) between teaching HES students and students elsewhere at the University, the challenges that generative AI brings to the field of writing, and the ways academic and creative writing overlap.