teaching and trauma

When I was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, everything seemed to cave in on my body as questions narrowed: first, what to take out via surgery, then what to put in via chemotherapy and food, and eventually, to possible internal causes due to genetic flaws. Although everything and everyone ...

Is there a pedagogical responsibility to traumatize our students? I’m not thinking of some unbridled notion of “tough love” in grading, or an exaggerated insistence that actions have consequences, or even routine attempts to challenge assumptions and perspectives. Rather, is there a pedagogical responsibility to make students feel less ...

We can define the syllabus with precision, but our best-laid plans are subject to the moments when life simply happens. Questions arise. Frustrations are felt. And the sages on the stage better have something to show for all their high-falutin’ learning. At least this is how I feel when teaching ...

In graduate school, I spent a year teaching at San Quentin State Prison while writing my dissertation. I loved my Religion and English classes at the prison and frequently remarked to friends that teaching incarcerated men, many of them in their mid-thirties or beyond, was strikingly similar to teaching 18-22...

The questions that inform my teaching and scholarship focus on representations of violence. This means I spend a good deal of time studying such representations. I learned several years ago that my capacity to answer relatively straight-forward questions like “But is that film really gory?” or “Will I find that ...