A Hybrid Workshop and Conference
in cooperation with creative-critical.net.

November 9-10, 2026
Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

In a time when a chatbot can interpret a poem and produce something increasingly more “human”-sounding in seconds, an uncomfortable question has come to the forefront of literary studies: What exactly are we teaching?

On November 9-10, Goethe University’s Institute of English and American Studies will host a two-day conference and workshop, Creative-Critical: Aesthetic Education and Sustainable Practices in the Futureproofing the Humanities, to address this fundamental question concerning the purposes and practices of literary studies: what is the purpose of the critical now, and what might creativity contribute to it?

Hosted by PD Dr. Tim Lanzendörfer (IEAS), M.F.A. Lecturer Maren Michel (IEAS), Prof. Dr. Thomas Karshan (University of East Anglia) and Prof. Dr. Irina Dumitrescu (Bonn), Creative Critical is a conference and workshop with international scholars, writers, and researchers. The focus: Critical, evaluative, and interpretive practices have become foundational to literary studies, while the creative has largely been elided from some higher educational and scholarly self-conception. At the same time, creative and critical writing can appear institutionally and disciplinarily divided. The conference asks how and why this separation has been produced and maintained—and what its consequences might be for literary education and research.

This question is particularly pertinent to the German humanities context, which the project places in dialogue with established and emerging work in Anglophone creative-critical practice. The conference brings together leading figures in creative-critical writing with scholars engaged in German and Anglo humanities research, creating an interdisciplinary forum in which the apparent distinction between creative and critical modes can itself become an object of inquiry.

The keynote speaker is Alexandra Grant, the international artist, writer, and publisher whose Autumn 2026 exhibit at the Neues Museum Nürnberg “One Star is Enough to Believe in the Light” („Ein Stern genügt, um an das Licht zu glauben”) has received popular and critical acclaim for exploring this very intersection of criticality and creativity.

The event does not propose abandoning criticality. Rather, it asks what critical reading, interpretation, evaluation, and argument might mean under contemporary conditions, and whether creative practice can expand these capacities rather than stand in opposition to them.

The program moves deliberately between practice and theory: workshops in creative-critical practice, an artist‘s keynote, an open roundtable, and scholarly panels with respondents.

Against the challenges posed by generative AI, changing student attention, and broader debates about the future of the humanities, Creative-Critical considers whether writing at the creative-critical nexus might offer a renewed model of literary studies: one that foregrounds writing as inquiry while remaining attentive to form, audience, and situation.