Light on Water: Conversations on Emergent Writing Methodologies

Abstract

Mona Livholts is a critic, untimely academic novelist, and social science scholar based in Sweden. She is Associate Professor of Social Work at the Department of Social and Welfare Studies, Linköping University, and coordinator of the Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies (R.A.W.). Her publications include Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies (editor) (Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality 7); "The Professor's Chair: An Untimely Academic Novella" (Life Writing); "The Snow Angel and Other Imprints: An Untimely Academic Novella" (International Review of Qualitative Research); and "Writing Water: An Untimely Academic Novella" (in Documents of Life Revisited: Narrative and Biographical Methodology for a 21st Century Critical Humanism). In a traditional sense, this article can be viewed as an interview with Mona Livholts by John Farrell Kelly, focusing on Livholts's writing. However, one major theme in Livholts's work is how mainstream textual forms may dislocate ways of knowing, particularly by marginalised groups, and the need to explore ways of reshaping these textual forms. In light of this theme, we aspire here to gently reshape the traditional interview form in several ways. First, we invite readers to view this article as a coauthored, conversational piece - it was written through a series of email exchanges from our locations in Colorado and Sweden over several months. Second, we integrate modest amounts of creative writing, which is characteristic of much of Livholts's work. Third, instead of using a 'question and answer' approach, we organise this article into several sections with carefully prepared introductions by Kelly and responses by Livholts.