Cantrell, Kate ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5689-614X and Gildersleeve, Jessica
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7694-5615
(2020)
Triggering Kindness: Teaching Narratives of Trauma During COVID-19.
NiTRO (32).
Abstract
In our experience teaching narratives of trauma in a first-year Australian literature course, offered during lockdown, we were cognisant of the importance of connecting with students who not only felt disconnected from their studies during the pandemic but additionally discomfited and perhaps distanced by the challenging nature of the course. While we were initially surprised by the overwhelmingly negative affect reported by students in response to the set reading, we were reminded, as Mary O’Dowd points out, that the study of Australian literature, and Australian history more generally, is often met with a 'resistance to hearing the story' (105). For this reason, one of the key aims of the course is to uncover students’ cultural biases and blind spots, and to build students’ capacity to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
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