Guiding life writers: the supervision of creative doctoral work interrogating personal trauma

ABSTRACT

There exists much literature on the student and doctoral candidate relationship across the disciplines. However, there is a gap in understanding this crucial dynamic in the context of creative practices, and an even more pronounced gap interrogating the supervisor to candidate dynamic when a student is conducting life-writing involving personal trauma. Despite this, more and more universities are opening their doors to these types of research projects. In 2014, a final year doctoral candidate in life-writing and her supervisor conducted a mini research project about their experience of supervision. The crux of their investigation hinged on the relatively nuanced requirements of supervision when the candidate is writing about personally traumatic themes in their dissertation. By combining their analysis of their real experiences as supervisor and candidate, and pre-existing academic thought on both the requirements of supervision and the differing needs of post-trauma students, the authors seek to contribute to the growing canon within the creative practices on supervisor/candidate relationships, as well as the relatively fraught ethics of the commodification of life experiences within tertiary institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Memoir
• trauma narrative
• death
• grief
• supervisor/candidate relationship
• narrative enquiry

Notes on contributors

Dr Sue Joseph has been a journalist for more than 35 years, working in Australia and the UK. She began working as an academic, teaching print journalism at the University of Technology Sydney in 1997. As a Senior Lecturer, she now teaches journalism and creative writing, particularly creative non-fiction writing, in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. She has written three books to date, the fourth on Australian Creative Non-fiction writers. Her research interests are around sexuality, secrets and confession, framed by the media; ethics and trauma narrative; memoir; reflective professional practice; ethical HDR supervision; and Australian creative non-fiction. She is currently Reviews Editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics.

Dr Freya Latona has recently been awarded her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney. Her non-traditional doctorate explored memoir writing and reading as a therapeutic outlet for grief. Specifically, Freya's research examined notions of bibliotherapy (reading therapy); the ethics of life-writing about deceased family members; and the presence of the ‘epiphany’ in concluding grief memoir. Freya is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency, Australia, and is currently on the path to becoming a practicing bibliotherapist.

Notes

1 The term ‘supervisor’, essential to this paper, refers to the primary academic contact and mentor throughout the thesis research period of a doctoral candidate. The supervisor/s (also known as doctoral advisors in the US) guide the student through their studies, handling both research and administrative queries.

2 The term ‘life-writing’ is defined in this paper as writing that is autobiographical in nature, recording a life event or events from the perspective of the author. Importantly, we define ‘life-writing’ as distinct from didactic autobiography, preferring to focus on creative non-fiction forms of life-writing, such as memoir.

3 These interviews were first partially published in the Refereed Proceedings of The 19th Conference of The Australasian Association of Writing Programs 2014 (Joseph & Latona 2014).

4 Miller & Tougaw (2002, 1–2).