Particle fictions: an experimental approach to creative writing and reading informed by particle physics

Hershman, T (2017) Particle fictions: an experimental approach to creative writing and reading informed by particle physics. PhD thesis, Bath Spa University. doi: 10.17870/bathspa.00010693

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Abstract

This two-part document comprises the work submitted for Tania Hershman's practice-based PhD in Creative Writing in answer to her primary research question: Can particle fiction and particle physics interrogate each other? Her secondary research question examined the larger question of wholeness and wholes versus parts. The first of the two elements of the PhD is a book-length creative work of what Hershman has defined as "particle fiction" - a book made of parts which works as a whole - entitled 'And What If We Were All Allowed to Disappear': an experimental, hybrid work comprised of prose, poetry, elements that morph between the two forms, and images, and takes concepts from particle physics as inspiration. The second element of this PhD, the contextualising research, entitled 'And What If We Were All Allowed To Separate And Come Together', which is written in the style of fictocriticism, provides an overview of particle physics and the many other topics relating to wholeness and wholes versus parts - from philosophy to postmodernism and archaeology - that Hershman investigated in the course of her project. This essay also details the "experiments" Hershman carried out on works which she defined as particle fictions, in order to examine whether it was possible to generalise and formulate a "Standard Model of Particle Fiction" inspired by a the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and to inform the creation of her own work of particle fiction.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Note:	Thesis supervised by Professor Kate Pullinger.
Keywords:	PhD by Practice, creative writing, experimental fiction, particle fiction, particle physics, literary form, prose, poetry, fictocriticism, philosophy, postmodernism, archaeology
Divisions:	School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2018 15:45
Last Modified:	19 Feb 2024 18:45
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/10693

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