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Trigger Happy: From Content Warning to Censorship
Abstract
The call for trigger warnings on college campuses could easily be read as simply a new protocol proper to new media forms in the early twenty-first century. However, because this call coincided with new sets of regulations around sexual interactions, sexual assault, and teacher-student relationships, trigger warnings have instead become a site for dynamic and often polemical debates about censorship, exposure, sensitivity, and the politics of discomfort. In this short piece I want to explore the function of the trigger warning and the import of the debates to which it gave rise.
... Inhalt (Halberstam, 2017). Auch Ängste vor einer Überempfindlichkeit, ›Verhätsche-lung‹ der Studierenden‹ (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018), einer eingeschränkten Redeund Entscheidungsfreiheit (AAUP, 2014;Butler, 2017), Überwachung und Einschränkung bürgerlicher Freiheiten sowie einer ›paternalistischen Normativität‹ wurden artikuliert (Halberstam, 2014(Halberstam, , 2017. ...
... . Auch Ängste vor einer Überempfindlichkeit, ›Verhätsche-lung‹ der Studierenden‹ (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018), einer eingeschränkten Redeund Entscheidungsfreiheit (AAUP, 2014;Butler, 2017), Überwachung und Einschränkung bürgerlicher Freiheiten sowie einer ›paternalistischen Normativität‹ wurden artikuliert (Halberstam, 2014(Halberstam, , 2017. Die Entwicklung koinzidierte zeitlich und inhaltlich mit Auseinandersetzungen im Rahmen des ›Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act‹, der sexuelle Gewalt auf dem Hochschulcampus transparent und präventiv adressierbar machen sollte, gefolgt von der #MeToo-Bewegung und von ›Time's Up‹, von Zustimmungsdebatten (›No-means-No‹, ›Yes-means-Yes‹) sowie der verstärkten Detabuisierung und Bekämpfung von sexuellen Übergriffen, vor allem gegenüber Minderjährigen. ...
... Das Besondere an Triggerwarnungen ist laut Jack Halberstam, dass ein fragiles und instabiles, unmündiges und wehrloses rezipierendes Subjekt angenommen wird, das durch eine unvorbereitete Konfrontation mit Gewaltinhalten und angesichts einer multimedialen Stoffpräsentation psychisch verletzt, an Traumatisierungen ›erinnert‹ oder potenziell zum Kollaps gebracht werden könnte (Halberstam, 2017 (Burgess, 1983, S. 99-105). Seit geraumer Zeit wird in der Psychotraumatologie weit verbreitet von ›Trigger‹ als Reaktivierung eines traumatischen Konflikts gesprochen. ...
Im deutschen Hochschulbildungsbereich hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren nach US-amerikanischem Vorbild die Praktik der Triggerwarnung durchgesetzt. Genau wie in den USA hat dies hitzige Debatten um Notwendigkeit, Chancen und Grenzen von Triggerwarnungen ausgelöst. Dem Wunsch nach einer zensurfreien Vermittlung von Medieninhalten steht das Bestreben entgegen, Menschen mit posttraumatischen Stresssymptomen eine Ausweichbzw. Wahlmöglichkeit einzuräumen und Schutz zu bieten (safe space). Besonders dringlich wird dies in Bezug auf traumatische Erfahrungen mit sexueller Gewalt. Der Text touchiert die Zensurgeschichte provokanter medialer Stoffe sowie die historischen Vorläufer der trigger warnings und nimmt die Begriffsgeschichte des Triggerterminus in den Blick, der bereits seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts von der Waffentechnologie, (Pflanzen-)Physiologie, Mechanik und Zoologie in die Psychologie und später in die Psychotraumatologie einwanderte.
... There is a rising body of literature on the use of trigger warnings, particularly in college classroom settings in the USA (Halberstam, 2017). The petition for the incorporation of trigger warnings in the classroom is widely assumed to have been started at Oberlin College in 2013 (Carter, 2015). ...
... The petition for the incorporation of trigger warnings in the classroom is widely assumed to have been started at Oberlin College in 2013 (Carter, 2015). Halberstam (2017) lends us a definition of trigger warnings that refers to triggers as notes attached to syllabi or content posted online, warning readers or browsers about content that is of an explicitly violent or sexual nature. Their use has been heavily debated in academia; trigger warnings have been criticised as being paternalistic, overly asserting structure and protection over others based on assumptions regarding harm and morality (Halberstam, 2017). ...
... Halberstam (2017) lends us a definition of trigger warnings that refers to triggers as notes attached to syllabi or content posted online, warning readers or browsers about content that is of an explicitly violent or sexual nature. Their use has been heavily debated in academia; trigger warnings have been criticised as being paternalistic, overly asserting structure and protection over others based on assumptions regarding harm and morality (Halberstam, 2017). Scholars arguing against this school of thought present trigger warnings as necessary to facilitate meaningful engagement with difficult topics, and to conscientise people to be sensitive to the traumas of others (Manne, 2015). ...
... Particularly when you've got quite big classes or you're not teaching them for very long, and half the student population are managing mental health issues (Abrams, 2022), it's this really difficult thing to navigate. Halberstam (2017) discusses the politics of discomfort in their article Trigger Happy, analysing the current trigger warning, and censorship debate within academia. Halberstam (2017) also draws attention to overly paternalistic approaches to education that shield students, their ability to critically analyse and attempt to understand their own reactions of shock or discomfort. ...
... Halberstam (2017) discusses the politics of discomfort in their article Trigger Happy, analysing the current trigger warning, and censorship debate within academia. Halberstam (2017) also draws attention to overly paternalistic approaches to education that shield students, their ability to critically analyse and attempt to understand their own reactions of shock or discomfort. They poignantly ask what effect this may have when a generation of students would prefer to opt for censorship in favour of safety, when they participate in a world outside of universities-what other liberties would an individual surrender in order to avoid experiences of discomfort? ...
This open access book aims to show how creative ruptions – disturbances or commotions - can lead to the emergence of ethical, care-ful educational futures. Grounded in empirical and theoretical research undertaken from posthuman, decolonial, new materialist and feminist perspectives, this edited volume questions historical and current assumptions as to how education is structured and enacted, and provides examples and tools illustrating how to create and work with creative ruptions. Under the guidance of an experienced editorial team, the authors demonstrate how creative ruptions can respond to various wicked problems through the design and enactment of transformative pedagogies and accompanying research. Including consideration of how we can grow our emotional repertoires from anxiety to include hope and courage, the book explores how creativity might expand the horizons of personal, social and political possibility that take shape within – and ultimately determine – education and its futures. Offering theoretically driven and practically grounded transdisciplinary examples of alternative educational futures, this volume is an ideal reading for those interested in the intersecting fields of Possibilities Studies in Education, Creativity in Education, Educational Futures, Pedagogy, and related disciplines.
... Particularly when you've got quite big classes or you're not teaching them for very long, and half the student population are managing mental health issues (Abrams, 2022), it's this really difficult thing to navigate. Halberstam (2017) discusses the politics of discomfort in their article Trigger Happy, analysing the current trigger warning, and censorship debate within academia. Halberstam (2017) also draws attention to overly paternalistic approaches to education that shield students, their ability to critically analyse and attempt to understand their own reactions of shock or discomfort. ...
... Halberstam (2017) discusses the politics of discomfort in their article Trigger Happy, analysing the current trigger warning, and censorship debate within academia. Halberstam (2017) also draws attention to overly paternalistic approaches to education that shield students, their ability to critically analyse and attempt to understand their own reactions of shock or discomfort. They poignantly ask what effect this may have when a generation of students would prefer to opt for censorship in favour of safety, when they participate in a world outside of universities-what other liberties would an individual surrender in order to avoid experiences of discomfort? ...
This chapter seeks to explore decolonisation as a creative orientation to problematise the politics of knowledge hierarchies of university curriculum (research methods in the case of this chapter) in order to respond to issues of epistemic violence and exclusion, and create transformative and radical ideas about the future of education. The critical discussions are the result of my interactions with different educators and students within the UK and beyond, my lived experience as an Algerian Kabyle who immigrated to the UK, and my doctoral research. The latter sought to explore the lived experiences of EFL (English as a foreign language) master’s (MA) students in studying research methodology and writing their dissertations in education fields at an Algerian university. I begin to discuss my own education journey in both Algeria and the UK which was grounded in Eurocentrism. The chapter then defines the concept of decolonisation in the context of educational research, and what this proposed orientation may mean for the future of education. I further explain the significance of using decolonisation as a creative approach to address exclusion and inequality, and invite readers to think of what it may mean in terms of their practices, pedagogies and creating new possible realities of educational futures. I also conclude with offering some practical ideas for change to decolonise educational research methods curriculum in a higher education (HE) context.
... For the wider debate on trigger warnings, see e.g.Halberstam 2014aHalberstam , 2014bHalberstam , 2017Maxfield; and Serano (in response to Halberstam 2014a). On a critical evaluation of the rhetoric of the debate about trigger warnings and the effects of trauma, see Robillard. ...
... A recent study byBridgland et al. calls to question the efficacy of trigger warnings.4 On the generational divide in the debate, seeHalberstam 2017;Maxfield;and Serano. ...
... Several studies on classrooms as safe spaces have recognized challenges in making spaces safe and criticized the concept for smoothing controversies that might actually lead to learning, the development of student's world views, and personal growth (e.g. Holley and Steiner 2005;Flensner and Von der Lippe 2019;Halberstam 2018; see also Kyrölä 2018). Callan (2016, 65) has even suggested that education should make students feel "intellectually unsafe" to advance learning and critical thinking (see also Halberstam 2018). ...
... Holley and Steiner 2005;Flensner and Von der Lippe 2019;Halberstam 2018; see also Kyrölä 2018). Callan (2016, 65) has even suggested that education should make students feel "intellectually unsafe" to advance learning and critical thinking (see also Halberstam 2018). Even if this is the case, all education should be based on "dignity safe space" that is "free of any reasonable anxiety that others will treat one as having an inferior social rank to theirs" as Callan (2016, 65) describes. ...
In the 2000s, European societies have transformed quickly due to the networked global economy, deepening a European integration process, forced and voluntary movement of people to and within Europe, and influence of social media on culture, communication, and society. Europe has become an increasingly diverse and pluricultural continent where many people simultaneously identify with multiple different cultural and social groups. In such “super-diversified” (Vertovec in New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity, transnationalism and civil-integration, Communities and Local Government Publications, Wetherby, 2007) European societies diversity itself is broad, multidimensional, and fluid (Vertovec in New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity, transnationalism and civil-integration, Communities and Local Government Publications, Wetherby, 2007; Blommaert and Rampton in Language and Superdiversity. Diversities 13(2):1–21, 2011). Different social locations and identities intersect within them—whether cultural, ethnic, national, social, religious, or linguistic. At the same time, however, European societies have faced the rise of diverse populist and radical right-wing movements promoting profoundly monoculturalist views and cultural purism. What are the means to confront this polarization of views and attitudes in Europe?
... There is also a tendency within many discussions of trigger warnings and safe spaces to equate calls for safety and warnings with increased fragility. Nuanced critiques of trigger warnings, such as Jack Halberstam's (2017), point to the ways trigger warnings presuppose a passive, inert, and entirely permeable subject. For Halberstam, the fear is that this model of the self necessitates and invites a pervasive paternalism. ...
... If we can practice this in the field, we must surely be able to practice it in the classroom. Listening, and particularly anthropological listening, can also be an antidote to the kind of paternalism Halberstam (2017) fears. This is not to say that anthropologists must take on roles as therapists and counselors that we are not trained for, but rather that we must draw on the skills our discipline gives us to identify the overlapping axes of vulnerability that exist within the world, and recognize that these vulnerabilities do not simply terminate at the classroom door. ...
... During the first part of the course, when we discussed critical theories of race and racism-covering topics like genocidal violence, chattel slavery, and lynching-the issue of trigger warnings never came up. As Halberstam (2017) observes in his critique of trigger warnings, race appears to barely enter into academic discussions of trigger warnings given that sexuality and gender issues are considered the exclusive vectors for these pedagogical protocols. Halberstam observes that while critics of trigger warning tend to uncritically cast diverse student populations as an undifferentiated mass of sheltered "snowflakes," trigger warning proponents tend to similarly homogenize students by making sexual violence the dominant cause of student trauma. ...
Following emerging sociological critiques of hegemonic femininities and calls for embodied research that troubles long standing assumptions about academia as a "safe haven," this essay provides critical reflections on quotidian forms of gendered racism and vigilantism in the classroom. Specifically, I draw on undergraduate student engagement with "Cat Person," a short story about a "bad date" that was published in the New Yorker in 2017 and is now considered essential reading for the #MeToo era. By bringing pop culture artifacts and autoethnographic reflections into conversation with what philosopher Barbara Applebaum refers to as the "pedagogical practice of comforting discomfort," I examine forms of Karenism that emerge in higher education classrooms, particularly for women of color faculty. I argue that in an institutional context where class-privileged white women most readily access narratives about violability and fragility, they are better positioned to summon pedagogical forms of comforting and care.
... As McKinley et al. (2019) underscore, a conflict of values and interests may be a catalyst for creative change, but these need to occur in a safe space. This may be one of the more difficult requirements for teachers, given that studies show that teachers are often unwilling or feel unprepared or unable to engage with critical or controversial material, in particular with children and adolescents (Halberstam, 2017;Hall, 2020;Nixon, 2009;Simon, 2009) and this may be exacerbated when dealing with pupils who are more comfortable and familiar in digital contexts than they are (OECD, 2021a). ...
Discourses surrounding digital technologies have often foregrounded their capacity to connect people however, in reality, online communication can also result in fragmentation, polarization and modes of exclusion. To address these issues, this paper highlights the need for learners to develop a critical digital literacy (CDL) that contributes to a greater understanding of how power and ideologies operate online. By proposing a two-pronged teaching strategy that integrates inquiry-based learning and digital activism, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the field of language and intercultural communication can help imagine a more equitable and inclusive online world through focused teaching strategies.
... The critical discourse around the use of trigger warnings in the popular media suggests that protecting people against being 'triggered' can result in an imposition of free speech, and has been described as a form of censorship (Halberstam, 2017). These critics highlight student hypersensitivity and sometimes attribute this to helicopter parenting or a victim culture. ...
Despite the initial understanding of the word ‘triggered’ as relating to the clinical phenomenon of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this language has become a common part of the vernacular today, used by many people to apply to a wide variety of experiences and events. Counselling students are particularly sensitised to trauma, as well as identity politics, and are familiar with trigger warnings at college. They themselves have experienced trauma at high rates. Therefore, we were interested to understand how they might be using the word and interpreting the experience of being ‘triggered’, whether different sources of being triggered are related to emotional reactions, and whether a discourse analysis might indicate how and why the term has become useful and for what other experiences it might be serving as a stand‐in. In this mixed‐methods study, 79 counselling students from around the country shared their definitions and experiences of being ‘triggered’. Participants completed surveys and wrote narratives, which, via thematic qualitative analysis, were coded into five themes. The quantitative analysis focused on the relationship of feelings to themes and the relationship between anger suppression and coping with each theme. Discourse analysis explored how individuals wrote about responsibility and anger. It was discovered that those who wrote about being triggered from a past sexual assault did not discuss anger, nor the responsibility of others to protect them (as those who wrote about microaggressions did), but positioned themselves as overreactors. Results are discussed with regard to training and practice.
... 21 Det var Oberlin Colleges likabehandlingskommitté som publicerade uppmaningen till lärare att använda sig av trigger warnings i utbildningen, men det har inte funnits någon enighet bland feministiska forskare om trigger warnings vara eller icke vara. Jack Halberstam (2017), professor vid Columbia University och framträdande forskare i feministiska kulturstudier, skrev kritiskt om trigger warnings i en artikel som publicerades i Signs år 2017. Han förlade då ursprunget till fenomenet i den konservativa rörelse som under 1980-och 90-talen framgångsrikt krävde varningslappar på skivor med så kallat "explicit content". ...
Debatten om ”trigger warnings” och ”trygga rum” berör alla universitetslärare, även dem som aldrig ställts inför dylika krav från studenter. Med utgångspunkt i den uppmärksammade konflikten på sexologutbildningen vid Malmö universitet våren 2021 diskuterar essän vad så kallade trigger warnings och trygga rum är, och hur lärare i högre utbildning kan förhålla sig till studenters föreställningar kring krav på klassrummets politiska relationer. Syftet är att presentera begrepp och tolkningar av ett omdiskuterat fenomen som universitetslärare kan komma att möta i sin undervisningsgärning; på så sätt bidrar artikeln till en fördjupad förståelse av universitetslärarrollen i 2020-talets politiska och sociala landskap.
... We will begin with a disclaimer: The word "triggering" itself has been so widely parodied that it inherently may reek of dismissal or disdain. 4 We use it purposefully as a way to describe the real experience of some learners within medical education and write in good faith that we can simultaneously validate concerns about the emotional health of students and the educational demands of medicine. ...
Issue
How educators should respond to student reports of intense emotional reactions to curricular content—i.e., being triggered—invites intense debate. There are claims of insensitivity on one side and calls to “toughen up” on the other. These polemics aside, such instances sometimes represent a true dilemma, particularly within medical education where engaging highly sensitive content is essential to future patient care and where managing one’s own emotions is a core competency. Parsing this convoluted and emotional debate into these domains illustrates how medical educators can simultaneously legitimize the lived experiences of students, engage in honest dialogue, and maintain a shared commitment to education. Evidence: While substantial energy has been spent debating the legitimacy of students’ emotional reactions, the discourse lacks a clear conceptual framework and we often end up talking past each other. The concept of brave spaces offers an important alternative where sensitive subject matter can be engaged with civility. Implications: This paper offers a model for building brave spaces within medical education by clarifying the rights and responsibilities of both teachers and learners in each of three intersecting domains: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and civic. This model is exemplified in a case where students reported being triggered by course content. By parsing this case across the three domains, we can clarify how responses are multifaceted and we can simultaneously avoid indictment of another’s lived experiences while preserving the pedagogical integrity of the curriculum.
... We often think of the classroom as a space in which knowledge is shared and created in dialogical form, both in conversations between teachers and students, among the students as well as in dialogue with texts and theories. The feminist classroom has often aspired to provide a space in which difficult questions about different forms of oppression and injustice can be discussed and analysed in a way that is safe and mindful (Halberstam, 2017;Ludlow, 2004). Despite these ambitions, in any classroom there are moments of tension, uncomfortable silence or sometimes of abrupt outburst. ...
... Furthermore, the English government counterterrorism 'Prevent' regime, designed to detect young people who may be attracted to terrorism (Ramsey, 2017), has threatened to identify and even arrest people who are simply studying controversial political topics at university, rather than identifying those at risk by absorbing 'Islamic State' ideology. Additionally, the use of 'trigger warnings' to students in class about potentially disturbing texts seems to suggest that rather than opening minds, universities might actually be closing them (Cares, Franklin, Fisher, & Bostaph, 2018;Halberstam, 2017). A controversy was sparked in the UK in 2017 when a Conservative Member of Parliament, who was in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (Brexit), sent a letter to all universities demanding to know what their lecturers were teaching students about this topic. ...
In what ways does access to undergraduate education have a transformative impact on people and societies? What conditions are required for this impact to occur? What are the pathways from an undergraduate education to the public good, including inclusive economic development? These questions have particular resonance in the South African higher education context, which is attempting to tackle the challenges of widening access and improving completion rates in in a system in which the segregations of the apartheid years are still apparent. Higher education is recognised in core legislation as having a distinctive and crucial role in building post-apartheid society. Undergraduate education is seen as central to addressing skills shortages in South Africa. It is also seen to yield significant social returns, including a consistent positive impact on societal institutions and the development of a range of capabilities that have public, as well as private, benefits. This book offers comprehensive contemporary evidence that allows for a fresh engagement with these pressing issues.
... Furthermore, the English government counterterrorism 'Prevent' regime, designed to detect young people who may be attracted to terrorism (Ramsey, 2017), has threatened to identify and even arrest people who are simply studying controversial political topics at university, rather than identifying those at risk by absorbing 'Islamic State' ideology. Additionally, the use of 'trigger warnings' to students in class about potentially disturbing texts seems to suggest that rather than opening minds, universities might actually be closing them (Cares, Franklin, Fisher, & Bostaph, 2018;Halberstam, 2017). A controversy was sparked in the UK in 2017 when a Conservative Member of Parliament, who was in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (Brexit), sent a letter to all universities demanding to know what their lecturers were teaching students about this topic. ...
Changing Higher Education for a Changing World draws on the outcomes of the cutting-edge research programmes of the UK-based Centre for Global Higher Education, the world’s largest social science research centre focused on higher education and its future. In countries with incomes at European levels, the majority of all families now have connections to higher education, and there is widespread popular interest in how it can be made better. Together, the contributors sharply illuminate key issues of public and policy interest across the world:
Do research universities make society more equal or more unequal?
Are students graduating with too much debt?
Who do we want to be attending universities?
Will learning technologies will abolish the need for bricks-and-mortar higher education institutions?
What can countries do to improve their scientific performance?
How can comparative teaching assessment and research assessment become much more effective?
The book explores higher education in the major higher education regions including China, Europe, the UK and the USA.
... Should some warning be provided before showing anything that may upset the students? Acknowledging the increasingly popular use of warning at some college campus, Halberstam [59] makes a strong statement against the use of trigger warnings. He explains that, for courses covering topics like gender, sexuality or social justice content, the discomfort the 'triggering' materials cause may have its educational value. ...
This paper demonstrates how the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach can be useful for developing a critical sexual literacy curriculum that combines gender and sexuality education and critical language teaching. The findings from an action research study conducted with 20 tertiary students in a voluntary English class in Hong Kong show how a heightened awareness of conflicting discourses could be stimulated by the heteroglossic nature of the classroom input that included media texts, face-to-face interaction with queer individuals and in-class Boal’s Image and Forum Theatres. The learners also experienced mixed emotions toward LGBTI people and reported language gain from the curriculum. A lot more would have to be done in critical sexual literacy research and practice to foster critical awareness of gender and sexuality and to challenge homo- and transphobic ideologies in everyday discourses.
... Noting that differences-especially race and gender-don't figure into their account, Halberstam also worries that "trigger refuseniks" risk homogenizing or universalizing accounts of harm. Halberstam (2017) goes on to note that "Both sides ignore the differences between and among students, and all fail to account for the differences that race and class make to experiences with trauma, expectations around protection, and exposure to troubling materials" (n.p.). Halberstam rightly worries about the ways that "the new sensitivity" props up a model of the student as a "defenseless, passive, and inert spectator who has no barriers between herself and the flow of images that populate her world" (n.p.). ...
... For example, at some institutions, undergraduate students have demanded trigger or content warnings be placed in syllabi or given in class before distressing material is discussed or shown. 43,44 In a survey of psychology faculty, the majority of professors now offer content warnings to students when teaching abnormal psychology. 45 Students are also asking to be exempt from learning material that distresses them and are calling for the creation of safe spaces where they can go to feel safe around others who agree to abstain from causing them discomfort. ...
Just as medical colleges have adapted to the Millennial generation of students, a new generation is poised to enter as matriculants. Learner attributes of this generation, Generation Z, are in stark contrast to previous ones, but more than that, they provide new challenges that undergraduate universities are already facing. This article aims to highlight some of these challenges, including those relating to student counseling services, volunteering activities, learning environments, and learner perspectives. These challenges are framed and discussed within the context of medical education.
... Furthermore, the English government counterterrorism 'Prevent' regime, designed to detect young people who may be attracted to terrorism (Ramsey, 2017), has threatened to identify and even arrest people who are simply studying controversial political topics at university, rather than identifying those at risk by absorbing 'Islamic State' ideology. Additionally, the use of 'trigger warnings' to students in class about potentially disturbing texts seems to suggest that rather than opening minds, universities might actually be closing them (Cares, Franklin, Fisher, & Bostaph, 2018;Halberstam, 2017). A controversy was sparked in the UK in 2017 when a Conservative Member of Parliament, who was in favour of the UK leaving the European Union (Brexit), sent a letter to all universities demanding to know what their lecturers were teaching students about this topic. ...
This chapter discusses the politics and pitfalls of studying the work that trauma does in the context of the geopolitics of refugee resettlement. Building on insights from Critical Refugee Studies (CRS), we argue that trauma, taken as an analytical lens, not only allows us to show how violence and conflict stretch across space, but also how humanitarian workers and researchers become involved in perpetuating traumatic experiences. CRS and trauma-informed humanitarian workers both advise against treating and researching displaced people as inherently traumatised. In heeding these ethical calls, our focus here is to reflect methodologically on the practical tensions between researching the concept of trauma while not further traumatising research subjects and yet taking the multiplicity and depth of their experiences seriously.
This chapter shares the learning of the authors who collaborated on an Arts and Culture University of Exeter Creative Fellowship in 2021–2022. The Creative Fellowship was itself a rupture, a process-driven placement with an open-ended approach, where artists and university staff were peers, and no fixed outcome was required. We held a common interest in care as resistance in contemporary workplaces, and as crucial to both learning and generating new ways of working through creative processes. This chapter is formed from edited extracts from two recorded conversations between the authors that took place towards the end of the Creative Fellowship. We reflected on the key moments, tensions, and insights. We present these as the learning we gained, which could usefully support others who seek to centre care, resist from within, or otherwise develop care-ful, ethical educational futures. We argue that vulnerability and discomfort are fundamental to creative processes, including learning, and care is required to hold these experiences productively. We conclude that the overemphasis in HE on individualised approaches to care—where staff and students are offered support such as apps to address experiences of stress, or where the burden of caring falls on individuals—fails to acknowledge its vital social and interpersonal dimensions and the responsibility of the institution towards sustainable ways of working for the community.
Museum accessibility, through audio description services, sighted guides, sensory maps/guides/social narratives, and more, is an essential part of exhibit safety and design. In the past decade, more museums recognize the importance of trigger warnings (a trigger being a sensory experience that may cause mental or physical discomfort, overload, or breakdown) for flashing lights, noise content, and movement to ensure visitors with epilepsy, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), PTSD, and mobility devices remain safe. But while more museums are developing resources and programming for neurodiverse individuals, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), many still do not understand how sensory maps, an inclusive and easy-to-create resource, are critical to visitor safety. A sensory map is an annotated layout of an exhibit, gallery, or entire museum that identifies areas with high and low sensory stimulation and the type of stimulation. Sensory overload/overstimulation can put visitors, staff, and collections at risk; sensory maps alleviate this risk by allowing visitors to self-select in or out of experiences, and in doing so, prioritize their own mental and bodily wellbeing. Highlighting how sensory maps are critical for visitor, staff, and object safety encourages museum boards of directors to allocate funding to create these resources and to seek out more funding for tailored programming and exhibit experiences. I met with accessibility professionals from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Spy Museum, the Houston Museum of Art, and others to share their insights about how to create accessible sensory maps (physical and digital versions) and reach out to disabled communities.
Trigger warnings, statements alerting readers, listeners, or viewers to the presence of content that might revive distressing memories, have become a flash point in recent discussions about the US academy. Providing a genealogy of the concept and practice in US colleges and universities, this article situates the trigger warning's growing cultural prominence within twined changes in computer-mediated communication and legal understandings of embodied consent. Seen against this backdrop of racialized, gendered struggles over the meanings of free, voluntary action, the trigger warning debate helps illuminate how the normative regimes of the contemporary university reflect the long afterlife of US racial slavery.
In this article I examine the ways in which trans and gender nonconforming people are produced as both a sensitive and triggering “issue,” particularly through sensitization practices that are characteristic of LGBTIQ+ diversity training. I discuss the work that different modalities of the sensitive do in the clinic and training of cisgender professionals by bringing together research materials from fieldwork in Chile. In doing so, I show how sensitivity sticks to trans people by making them vulnerable to medical gatekeeping practices, which end up producing a particular way of knowing the other marked by what I call the “anxiety to know,” reproducing forms of gender panic that construct nonnormative genders as still needing an explanation. My discussion joins the call of scholars and activists who interpellate cisgender practitioners to account for our own gender anxieties as a means to facilitate an encounter with opacity that might trigger a desire to know more about our gender nonconformity.
This article examines the possibilities of using the Italian feminist praxis of affidamento , or entrustment, as a curatorial methodology, arguing that it has the capacity to transform galleries into spaces where the generative potential of social differences is foregrounded – rather than repressed – and where intergenerational knowledge, and its attendant affects, can be shared. Reflecting on my role as a founding member of the feminist working group EMILIA-AMALIA, which, since 2016, has organized free film screenings, public talks, collective meals and writing workshops, I chart the ways Italian feminist philosophy has informed the group’s curatorial work and ask whether affidamento offers a model for pedagogical participation within the gallery that recognizes and validates the varied, and often conflicting, needs and desires of generations of feminist practitioners.
Over the years, I have become accustomed to students reacting to these topics with personal concern. Given the sometimes explicit depictions of violence in the texts used in the seminar, I usually warn about the risks of traumatization or re-traumatization later in the term, when responsibilities and presentations are assigned or before a potentially difficult session begins. What is new, however, is participants requesting a clearly articulated trigger warning, using the term trigger warning, even before the actual explanation of the content. Moreover, similar escalations are happening more frequently in seminars that do not necessarily cover ‘triggering’ topics, such as those on Latin America when we touch upon the violence in the region, those on migration that also cover issues of asylum and trauma, and those on care that include a reflection on the power asymmetries in social relationships. In this article I suggest approaching open complaints, subtle irritations and also awkward silences in the face of more or less clearly articulated objections in university corridors with comparable introspection that focuses not only personal, but especially structural challenges. Dealing with conflicts retrospectively and with temporal distance – both individually and collectively – might allow participants to reflect on those incidents in light of both the institutional and social constellations.
Ett av de senaste årens mest uppmärksammade fenomen inom högre utbildning handlar om olika former av gränshållande kring potentiellt upprörande undervisningsinnehåll. Dessa konflikter har lett till intensiv mediabevakning och politisk mobilisering. Men bortom de mest uppmärksammade konflikterna finns återkommande och vardagliga situationer där frågor om exempelvis bild- och språkbruk utmanar studenter och lärare när de möts i undervisningen. Essän argumenterar för att det behövs fler och bättre samtal om sådana konflikter och spänningar. Men debatten bör präglas av en analytisk hållning som sätter undervisningsuppdraget i centrum. Syftet med essän är att erbjuda lärare analytiska ingångar till fördjupad reflektion genom att först problematisera begreppet akademisk frihet; därefter diskutera realiseringen av frihet och ansvarstagande inom ramen för specifika styrmekanismer; och slutligen lyfta fram reflexivitet och etik som centrala i utvecklingen av universitetslärares professionalitet. ENGLISH ABSTRACT Between culture wars and bureaucracy –on academic freedom and the professionalismof university teachersOne of the most debated phenomena in higher education in recent years concerns various forms of controversies around potentially upsetting teaching content. Some conflicts have led to intense media coverage and political mobilization. But there are also everyday situations where questions about, for example, the use of images and language challenge students and teachers when they meet in teaching. The essay argues that conversations about such conflicts and tensions are needed but should be characterized by an analytical stance that puts the mission of higher education at the center. The purpose of the essay is to offer teachers analytical tools that facilitate reflection by first problematizing the concept of academic freedom; then discuss the realization of freedom and responsibility within the framework of specific governance mechanisms; and finally highlight reflexivity and ethics as central to the development of university teachers’ professionalism.
Trauma is now recognized as a common human experience that has consequences, including adverse effects on learning outcomes. Principles of trauma-informed care include awareness of the impact of trauma and use of strategies to prevent retraumatization. While well-described in medical and mental health care, these principles have been inconsistently applied in the medical education classroom. Content warnings can be part of a trauma-informed classroom approach that notifies learners about potentially distressing topics, allows individuals to employ self-care, and seeks to resist retraumatization. This article describes our experience integrating a content warning about reproductive topics in a second-year medical school course.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-022-01559-0.
Investigations of how people have used music to represent, perform, enact and cope with trauma have proliferated in the last decade, although these have often focused on post-World War II musicians and musical phenomena. This work has engaged various methodologies and drawn on myriad bodies of trauma theory in order to better understand the relationships between music and trauma for Holocaust survivors, Cold War- and glasnost-era Eastern European musicians and civilians and soldiers in Iraq. However, despite the growing interest in trauma within music scholarship, scant attention has been paid to relationships between musical phenomena and trauma prior to World War II. And yet, the wars, revolutions, forced displacement, slavery and imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make these years some of the most violent in the histories of modern Europe and the Americas, and thus some of the most important to address when asking questions regarding relationships between music and trauma.
In this special issue's introductory essay, we consider why pre-twentieth century musicians and repertoires have historically not been addressed in scholarly literature. In so doing, we outline the aims of the issue; review relevant literature in musicology and trauma studies; discuss the benefits and challenges of applying trauma theory to nineteenth-century music and musicians and provide readers with information on this special issue's collaborative history. Although giving readers a fleshed-out overview of trauma studies from the nineteenth century to present is outside the scope of this article, this introduction nevertheless provides enough background on the status and main ideas of trauma research from the mid-nineteenth century to present day to facilitate comprehension of how the research showcased in this special issue relates to social, historical and political conceptions of trauma.
Drawing on data from a larger feminist study that explored how secondary English teacher candidates responded to a sexual trauma text set and pedagogy for teaching such narratives with Canadian adolescents, this paper examines how caretaker discourses emerged in response to these stories and learning. This especially manifested as emerging teacher participants discussed and troubled the notion of ‘safety’ in schools altogether, searched for ways to cultivate ‘safe-er’ classroom spaces, and critically considered triggering and content (trigger) warning practices. With the aim of thinking about how educators might build radical classrooms prepared to address Tarana Burke’s Me Too movement, the pervasiveness of sexual assault, and the insidiousness of rape culture through literacy learning, this paper details the sometimes precautionary but overall promising ways in which teacher candidates considered tackling difficult subject matter in English Language Arts.
Dominant paradigms of epistemology conventionally separate the rational from the emotional. In contradistinction to those views, we build on a rich tradition of scholarship about feminist anger to make the claim that outrage, in particular, has epistemic value. We understand feminist outrage—especially in the sense of a gross or malicious wrong or injury to principle—as a source of knowing, rather than an obstacle to it. Though the epistemic usefulness of anger has long been recognized among feminists, particularly Black feminists and other feminists of color, the disciplining of feminist outrage in the scholarly publication process invites our attention and demands our response. We define outrage epistemology as a way of knowing through felt, reflective awareness of injustice.
This paper analyzes three kinds of feminist subversion of the university. Each subversion instantiates the rallying slogan “The personal is political” in the academic context, be it in its pedagogic, scientific or institutional dimensions. From an ethical perspective, “the personal” can be considered synonymous with “personal feelings” as it is taken into account in feminist pedagogies. Considering “personal experiences” is also an essential epistemological issue in both feminist scholarship and feminist activism, in relation with consciousness raising. Finally, to acknowledge “the private” implies to take into account the care work done in the domestic sphere and cannot go without a transformation of academic culture, in order to make room for the (so-called) reproductive labor in universities.
This article revisits Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida's work on Immanuel Kant in order to contribute to the theorisations of the ethics and politics of sexuality at universities today. It asks: how does phallogocentrism operate in the discourse of the university which we have inherited from Kant? And how can an understanding of the sexual forces woven into this discourse help us unravel and complicate the paradoxes that currently define the concept and the practice of academic freedom? By interrogating academic freedom from within an analysis of the university's sexual economy, this article aims to contribute to feminist critique with a view to renewing university discourses and practices. It shows that the contract between the nation state and scholars upon which the university is founded is not only financial or sociopolitical but also sexual. It argues that academic freedom must be conceived not as a university subject's right to speak or act freely but as a continuous ethical relationship to others – where a critique of the university's alleged sexual indifference remains paramount.
This paper considers the feasibility and desirability of radical, critical pedagogies in teaching higher education students about “sensitive” topics with children, sexualities, and schooling used as an example to explore this. Reflecting on early career research-led teaching, I confront anxieties informing decisions about what and how to teach children’s geographies of sexualities in light of student and institutional expectations and evaluations, and in relation to how colleagues have taught. Scrutinising my pedagogy with respect to what could have been more evocative teaching and uncomfortable learning, I question the extent to which I achieved the radical and critical potential I foresaw in introducing teaching on children and sexualities; teaching which – alongside student and institutional expectations and evaluations – has been informed through broader social norms of acceptability and permissibility, and contemporary imperatives for knowledge to be “relevant” and “useful”. In gesturing toward more challenging teaching, I consider the appropriateness of trigger/content “warnings” and explore speakability (after Monk) as a strategy for approaching “sensitive” topics, including age of consent. As an alternative to trigger/content warnings, I explore principles of content previews/ forecasts when broaching “sensitive” topics while remaining critical of what constitutes “sensitive” topics/content throughout.
The chapter maps out and examines online debates about trigger and content warnings in the late 2010s, asking how they negotiate vulnerability. Whose vulnerability comes to matter most in these debates, how, and for what aims? The chapter proposes that the figure of the trigger warning currently circulates most intensely in three contexts: first, in feminist discussion forums where the use of warnings is a desired, required and normalised practice; second, in the feminist, queer and anti-racist academic opposition to trigger warnings which emphasises the pedagogical value of discomfort; and third, in the circulation of trigger warnings in anti-feminist online spaces. Each of these contexts understands vulnerability in somewhat different but overlapping ways: as a standpoint that both prohibits and enables; as a necessity to life that must be embraced; and a paradoxical position where claims to power are made through claims of disempowerment. The chapter does not argue against or for trigger warnings but invites readers to re-evaluate their own stances and understand what is at stake in the opposing as well as defending arguments, depending on context.
In the last few years, the language and politics of trigger warnings have spread all over the Internet and academic classrooms. The question of whether warnings should be given about content that may be upsetting, offensive or trigger post-traumatic stress responses has been heatedly debated in feminist, queer and anti-racist discussions online. This chapter examines and contextualises these debates, asking how they both negotiate and generate experiences of vulnerability and agency in relation to controversial media content. The chapter analyses the differences and overlaps between three key sites of the debate: feminist discussion groups where the use of warnings is a required and normalised practice; feminist critique of trigger warnings emphasising the value of negative affect; and anti-feminist online spaces where trigger warnings are ridiculed.
This paper discusses the recent emergence of a new piece of formulaic language, the trigger warning. The study examines use of trigger warnings, as well as discourse around the idea of the trauma trigger in the Birmingham Blog Corpus. The analysis is presented from a cultural-cognitive perspective, focussing on particular on the image schematic and conceptual metaphoric basis of the conceptualisations. The conceptualisation of trauma, and more specifically, PTSD, has been argued to be culturally specific. Its construction as an entity that can re-emerge and cause harm has a history in the English language going back to the First World War. This idea has developed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the trigger warning is the culmination of a modern folk model of trauma together with discourse functions.
This article examines commonplaces in the debate over using trigger warnings in college classes with special attention given to the repudiation of “sensitivity.” Arguments against sensitivity have privileged appeals to academic freedom over course and classroom accessibility, but these values may engender conflicting and even contradictory obligations. A rhetorical theory of sensitivity can equip teachers and scholars of rhetoric to make more ethical decisions in the debate over trigger warnings and can lead the field toward a more “sensitive” rhetoric.
The fierce public and scholarly debate over trigger warnings in university classrooms has often characterized the issue as one of academic freedom and ignored the social justice arguments for trigger warnings. In this essay, we argue that trigger warnings expand academic speech by engaging students more fully in their own learning. Specifically, we understand trigger warnings as a means of respecting students’ intellectual, emotional, and physical boundaries. By framing trigger warnings in this way, we argue that they are tools of worldmaking to the degree that they promise to improve accessibility, engage students better in learning, and cultivate more socially just and livable campuses.
This article explores the representational practices of feminist theorising around gender and violence. Adapting Liz Kelly’s notion of the continuum of women’s experiences of sexual violence, I argue that ‘continuum thinking’ can offer important interventions which unsettle binaries, recognise grey areas in women’s experiences and avoid ‘othering’ specific communities. Continuum thinking allows us to understand connections whilst nevertheless maintaining distinctions that are important conceptually, politically and legally. However, this is dependent upon recognising the multiplicity of continuums in feminist theorising – as well as in policy contexts – and the different ways in which they operate. A discussion of contemporary theory and policy suggests that this multiplicity is not always recognised, resulting in a flattening of distinctions which can make it difficult to recognise the specifically gendered patterns of violence and experience. I conclude by considering how focusing on men’s behaviour might offer one way of unsettling the contemporary orthodoxy which equates gender-based violence and violence against women.
My Title IX Inquisition.” Chronicle of Higher Education
- Laura Kipnis
The Coddling of the American Mind.” The Atlantic
- Greg Lukianoff
- Jonathan Haidt
Trigger Warnings Encourage Free Thought and Debaterestraint-of-expression-on-college-campuses/trigger-warnings-encourage-free-thought-and-debate. First citation in article
- Bailey Loverin
Warning: The Literary Cannon Could Make Students Squirmus/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-students-squirm.html?_r=2. First citation in article
- Jennifer Medina