Creativity both helps individuals flourish and also benefits our shared collective lives as citizens, workers, scientists and professionals. Instrumentally, humans need to respond effectively to our changing environments, which means we must, together or separately (but better together) be creative and create something new to preserve ourselves in increasingly unpredictable and potentially hostile environments. This could be a new tool, a new image, a new technology, a new concept, a new imaginary (or a creative development of an older one), new words or even a new language. Aside from instrumental matters of defense or material advantage, non-instrumental creative products in the arts and sciences are appreciated and valued in and of themselves. The different, the clever, the creative, and notably, original works in fields characterized by play and innovation, contribute to our well-being. Creative people are generally valued by society and rewarded accordingly.
Language, or languages, play an important role in the thought processes, communication, and relationships by which creativity is engendered and manifested. Intriguingly, empirical evidence suggests that multilingual individuals score more highly on assessments of creativity.
In addition, empirical research into what is called “the foreign language effect” suggests that multilinguals are better decision-makers, with flexibility, tolerance for ambiguity, ability to resist framing effects, and better handling of moral dilemmas! Possibly related, cognitive declines with age may be less among multilinguals.
So, having multicultural experience and developing some proficiency in an additional language might enhance creativity and certain other aspects of thinking. Possibly there are better and worse ways of developing an additional language, in general, and in search of creativity in particular. Various exercises, often involving language, exist which can be practiced to enhance one’s creativity (together or in groups).
This course will approach creativity with an emphasis on creativity in and through writing, literacy, and multimodality. The course will review definitions of creativity. It will consider the language practices (both monolingual and multilingual) that may be involved in creative work and play, and specialized forms of thought. It will spend some time on the technical literature that studies the relation between multilingualism and creativity, which provides empirical support for claims about additional language experience and thinking. It will balance that with experience with practical and fun activities nominally intended to, or optimistically hoping to boost our creativity.
This course is a Writing Intensive course. The written modality is a location for creative work; writing (and associated forms of literacy) also foster creativity. Writing assignments count for 80% of the course grade and must be adequately completed if students are to complete the course with a grade of D or better.