Writing, Healing, and Trauma
This course provides an introduction to scholarly investigations of writing, healing, and trauma primarily from within the field of composition studies, while also introducing relevant scholarship in the allied fields of literary studies, cultural studies, psychology, media studies, and English education. It begins with an overview of a variety of disciplinary definitions of key terms such as trauma and trauma studies and then works to set these inquiries in conversation with relevant scholarship on healing and writing, both inside and outside of the classroom context.
Student Learning Objectives:
As a seminar in composition and rhetoric, this course is designed to broaden the student’s foundational understandings of composition studies generally and studies in writing, healing, and trauma more specifically, as both a form of praxis and as part of the intellectual work of the humanities. This course will thereby enrich the student’s disciplinary knowledge in C/R and English studies as well as deepening the students’ understanding of disciplinary approaches to these terms in allied fields.
Required Texts:
Pdfs distributed including the following:
Selections from:
Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.
Felman, Shoshanna and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Harris, Judith. Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self Through Writing. SUNY P, 2003.
Articles/Book Chapters:
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Flights of Imagination.” Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. Duke University Press, 2015, pp. 23-46.
—–. “Let Us be the Healing of the Wound.” Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. Duke University Press, 2015, pp. 9-22.
Batzer, Benjamin. “Healing Classrooms.” Composition Forum 34 (Summer 2016)
Beltrán, Ramona, and Stephanie Begun. “‘It Is Medicine’: Narratives of Healing from the Aotearoa Digital Storytelling as Indigenous Media Project (ADSIMP).” Psychology and Developing Societies, vol. 26, no. 2, Sept. 2014. 155–179.
Desser, Daphne. “Public Memory, Memoir, and the Shoah: Narrating Inherited Trauma.” Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies. Vol. 15, Autumn, 2020.153-172.
—–.“Teaching Writing in Hawai‘i after Pearl Harbor and 9/11: How to ‘Make Meaning’ and ‘Heal’ Despite National Propaganda.” Trauma and the Teaching of Writing. Ed. Shane Borrowman. Albany: SUNY P, 2005. 85-97.
Dutro, Elizabeth. “Writing Wounded: Trauma, Testimony, and Critical Witness in Literacy Classrooms.” English Education. (January 2011)
Ryden, Wendy. “From Purgation to Recognition: Catharsis and the Dialectic of Public and Private in Healing Writing.” JAC 30.1 (2010): 239-67. Web. 6 Oct. 2014.
Spear, Rachel N. “Let Me Tell You a Story”: On Teaching Trauma Narratives, Writing, and Healing” Pedagogy (2014) 14 (1): 53–79.
Tyler, Lisa (1999) “Narratives of Pain: Trauma and the Healing Power of Writing,” The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning: Vol. 5 , Article 4. 1999.
Course Assignments:
Unit Summary and Responses (40 points;10 points each):
The student will produce four unit “summary and response” papers of approximately 1000 words that engage with the texts of the unit. In the first half of each paper, the student will summarize key arguments presented in the unit. In the second half, the student will respond with interpretations of the readings, connections made with other relevant texts, and/or questions. The use of personal narrative and/or reflection in the second half is acceptable.
Outline, First Draft, Peer Review of Final Project (30 points; 10 points each):
In preparation for the writing of the seminar paper, the student will submit an outline for the final project, noting which of the required readings for the course as well additional texts the student finds useful for the research project.
Final Project (30 points):
The final project is a research-based, text-centric, scholarly paper in composition studies and/or a related field that employs academic writing addressing a topic situated within course readings on trauma, writing, and healing. The incorporation of personal narrative and/or reflection is acceptable. Approximately 2000-2500 words.