“Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing during the Cold War”: Claims against workshop lack detail

In 'Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing during the Cold War,” Eric Bennett posits that MFA writing programs such as the Iowa Writers' Workshop did as much to advance an ideological agenda as they did an aesthetic agenda in the years following World War II. Bennett builds his argument by focusing on the careers of Paul Engle and Wallace Stegner, the two University of Iowa graduates who went on to lead quintessential writing programs, Engle at Iowa and Stegner at Stanford.

Engle, a Cedar Rapids native who led the Iowa Writers' Workshop to prominence and co-founded the UI's International Writing Program, is the key figure in the study. Bennett, who graduated from the workshop in 2000, traces Engle's development as a writer and an administrator, arguing that he was at the vanguard of efforts to ensure that the teaching of writing in the United States promoted a focus on the lives of individuals rather than broad sociological ideas.

While the portrait of Engle is detailed and carefully builds Bennett's case, the chapter on Stegner does less to advance the argument, focusing more on Stenger the writer rather than his career in the classroom and as an administrator. But Bennett does trace the ways in which Stenger was in tune with the Cold War zeitgeist until societal changes in the late 1960s and 1970s led to critical reexaminations of his work.

Bennett also includes a chapter about Henry James and Ernest Hemingway, writers who he argues are the exemplars MFA students learn to emulate, and whose aesthetics and philosophies align with the programs' focus on the concrete and the individual. While the chapter, which comes late in 'Workshops of Empire,” helps explain how Cold War concerns were transformed into writing curricula, the book might have benefited from a nuanced consideration of the work of authors who attended writing programs during the period Bennett studies. He certainly implies that programs such as the Writers' Workshop churn out writers of a specific type, but he provides few examples to substantiate this idea.

Still, 'Workshops of Empire” offers a thought-provoking read about legendary figures and programs in the writing communities of our region and of the nation.