Hey, all. As stated in the title, I got my master's. I owe a lot to this site's community to keep me going and safe from being gaslit.
If it would help people, I would love to share my knowledge and experience about graduate school, writing spaces, or anything that might interest you. Here are some details that might invite questions (that won't doxx me):
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My focus was Prose/Fiction
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To complete the master's I had to turn in a novel as my thesis.
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I volunteered in the anti-racist program in my Creative Writing Department and handled some cases of in-class discrimination issues.
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Some of my peers are boomers and/or libs and I workshopped with them.
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I took courses on teaching Creative Writing, if you want some general advice.
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I was only made aware of the CIA's history of influencing writing programs during my final semester.
If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them or go into more detail.
https://www.openculture.com/2018/12/cia-helped-shaped-american-creative-writing-famous-iowa-writers-workshop.html
So one of the big things that gets parroted fairly often is 'show, don't tell.' It's good advice sometimes, but it is a useful tool in the right hands. Instead of just saying that a person or system is perpetuating racism, you need to substantiate the claim. It can muddy the water under certain circumstances, or make the conversation long and wordy in others. It discourages discussion on political theory, calling it too abstract or 'political.'
It's subtle strategies like that which make it hard to portray what can be (socialism) over what is all people have known (capitalist hellscape.)
Oh yeah it would also seem to make any critique of capitalist realism totally invisible to people who aren't already on the left. "Damn government burning those oranges, probably communists"
This contrasts with the CIA influence on art where they deliberately encouraged abstraction to make it harder to represent material political messages.