Truth & the Power of Telling Required Materials
Assignments
Due July 15 Tuesday: Required Readings
On Truth and Story Telling
- O’Brien, Tim. 1990. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin Books.
- Book Chapter: O’Brien, Tim. 1990. “How to Tell a True War Story.” In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, 73-92. New York: Penguin Books.
- Because of the significance of this story, I have posted “How to Tell a True War Story” on the D2L Class Website
- This story talks about the rules of storytelling
- WARNING: While this story is highly valuable for understanding the nature of storytelling, it does contain graphic descriptions of war violence and some swear words
- Book Chapter: O’Brien, Tim. 1990. “How to Tell a True War Story.” In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, 73-92. New York: Penguin Books.
- Gallagher, Chris, & Gray, Peter. Ambivalent Reflections: On Telling “True” Stories of the Classroom Author(s). College Composition and Communication, June, 2001, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Jun., 2001), pp. 651-655.
Truth, Trauma, and the Power of Telling In Class Activities
Opening
- Video: Peter Himmelman “Midnight Walk in the Ruins”
- “I took a midnight walk in the ruins. Guess I was looking for your face.”
Warning: This Lesson Contains Difficult Content
- In this lesson, we will talk about war, truth, killing, death, and trauma (there will also be some swear words)
- Narrative Inquiry deals with very powerful real issues that can be upsetting
- We are living in a world of trauma so it is important to discuss stories that might deal with trauma which students may write whether or not you ask them to
- If you need to sit this class session out for personal reasons, that is completely acceptable; you do not have to give an explanation, but please let Dr. Pagnucci know that you will not attend the lesson
- If you need to leave the classroom during the session, that is alright too
- We will discuss strategies for helping students and teachers respond to trigger events in short term ways
- For truly serious issues, you always want to encourage people to seek assistance and guide them toward it if you can as their teacher
- Dr. Pagnucci is not an expert on trauma but he has attended sessions on the topic and spoken to a number of faculty who are experts on this topic; the topics of trauma, health, and well being will only continue to grow in importance in the future, so Dr. Pagnucci’s hope is that this lesson will give you a little preparation for responding (there is, of course, much more you can learn)
On Telling Stories
- Video: “How to Tell a True War Story Lesson”
- Video: Tim O’Brien Reading “The Man I Killed” from The Things They Carried
Dialogic Questions
A few questions about O’Brien’s war stories:
- What is the importance of the truth?
- Is there such a thing as the truth?
- How do we get at the truth?
- Does research need to be true?
- Is it ok to use fiction in research to get at the truth?
- What is the importance of factual truth?
- What is the importance of emotional truth?
- What is our responsibility to tell the truth as researchers?
- Has the idea of “fake news” changed how we think about the truth?
On Trauma
- An ordinary response to an extraordinarily bad situation
- Resides in the body
- Trauma is also subjective: One person can be traumatized by something that another is not
- A stress headache is a simple example
- Peter Levine
- Walking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
- How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
- Bessel Van Der Kolk
Dialogic Questions
Here are some excellent discussion questions raised by Debacher and Harris-Moore:
- Is it better to confront emotions and difficult topics in times of trauma, or to move forward with business?
- If we invite the topic of trauma into our classes, should we give students the ability to opt out of particular texts and assignments?
- If we do allow—or perhaps even encourage—students to express their feelings about recent events in lieu of a traditional assignment, how do we grade this nontraditional reflection?
And thinking about MacDevitt’s article, here’s an even more challenging question:
- How can we learn to be more empathic teacher/listener/graders?
One More Thought
Assignments
Due July 16 Wednesday: Required Readings on Hope & Healing
Pedagogies of Trauma and Healing
- Article: Tyler, Lisa. Narratives of Pain: Trauma and the Healing Power of Writing. JAEPL, Vol. 5, Winter 1999-2000, 14-24
- Although quite old, I found this article’s discussion of the benefits students gain from writing about trauma highly persuasive
- MacDevitt, John. (2013). Responding to Student Traumatic Writing: A Psychologist’s View. Teaching English in the Two Year College. 135-148.
- This article from a psychologist/composition teacher talks about students’ need “to air pain”
Sample Stories of Healing
- Article: DeBacher, Sarah, & Deborah Harris-Moore. First, Do No Harm: Teaching Writing in the Wake of Traumatic. Composition Forum 34, Summer 2016
- This article tells about two traumatic events and how teachers tried to help their students cope with those events through writing
Optional Materials for Stories of Healing
Optional Pedagogical Resources
- Teaching Blog Post: Silvas, Tiana. (2018). Releasing the mind of childhood trauma through writing. International Literacy Association.
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Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Optional Articles/Book Chapters
- Molloy, Cathryn. Multimodal Composing as Healing: Toward a New Model for Writing as Healing Courses. Composition Studies 44.2 (2016): 134–152
- Goggin, Peter, & Goggin, Maureen. (2005). Presence in absence: Discourses and teaching (in, on, and about) trauma. In Trauma and the Teaching of Writing (pp. 29-51). State University of New York Press.
- Peter Goggin is an IUP Alum
- Moran, Molly Hurley (2004). Toward a writing and healing approach in the basic writing classroom: One professor’s personal odyssey. Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 23, No. 2.
- Book Chapter: Frankl, Viktor E. (1992). Man’s Search for Meaning. An introduction to logo therapy. Fourth Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.
- This is one of the great works of the 20th Century; the entire book is fabulous
- Especially worth reading are pp. 78-91. Please note that the text on p. 83 is readable but slightly messed up. The rest of the pages are easy to read.
- A key narrative related quote is on p. 81: “We could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.”
Optional Thesis/Dissertations
- Rogers, Scott L., “Writing out the storm: trauma and the work of composition.” (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1225.
- A dissertation that examines the idea of teaching about trauma in composition courses
- Especially valuable are pp. 30-59:
- Tropes, Arguments, and Narrative of Post-traumatic Pedagogy p. 30
- Teachers Like Therapists (pp. 31-43)
- Writing Is Inevitable (pp. 44-52)
- Trauma as a Teachable Moment (pp. 53-59)
- Oorlog, Carrie Crisman, “Within and Without: Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory, and the Healing Narrative” (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1111.
- A thesis that discusses how to respond to living in the “Age of Trauma,” a term she takes from Stolorow (2011)
- Stolorow, Robert D. “Empathic Civilization in an Age of Trauma.” International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. 22 November 2011. https://iapsp.org/eforum/feeling_221111.php.
Optional Book Review