I, too, have been thinking a lot about what we are to call ourselves as students of the amorphous blob of studies known as English. It's true that whatever it is we think we do (be it writing creatively, textual scholarship, linguistics, etc.), we have to account for the ways in which our particular fields of study snake out and touch those also under the English umbrella. Just saying that one studies "English" is only accurate in its ambiguity. On the other hand, when I try to be more specific and call myself a creative writing student, I am directing attention away from the obvious studies of literature and literary criticism involved in CW.
For these reasons, I typically prefer to think of myself as a student of capital L Literature. While the accepted version of what it might mean to be a student of Literature may exclude creative writers en mass, I like to think of what I do as the study of how to generate as well as analyze literature.
I think there is a stigma that accompanies serious scholars who describe themselves as creative writer. I mean, we spend so much time with our head in the clouds trying to come up with rhymes for "popsicle" that there's no way we give serious consideration to all of the other stuff that true "English majors" or "literary scholars" have to worry about, right?
I guess it just seems a lot easier to create my own definition of "literature student" than to try and shift public perception of the "creative writing student." Though I truly wish that weren't the case.
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