WGS300: American Trauma Narratives: Men & Women in Trauma

Summer 2010 – Online

This Course’s Facebook Group: WGS300: Women & Trauma

Please join this group no later than Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Instructor: Ami Blue Email:

blueami@msu.edu
Facebook: www.facebook.com/abluedude Skype: abluedude

WGS Course Description: Formerly WMS 300. Intensive study of selected topics
highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of gender studies, including feminist
theory and practice. Special topics courses include, but are not limited to: Gender,
Sexuality and Homophobia; Masculinity and Contemporary Culture; Gender and
Terrorism; and many others. May be retaken for a maximum of six hours, provided
the topics are different.

Materials
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic
Abuse to Political Terror. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. New York: Plume, 1993.
Additional readings made available through email attachment, Facebook links to
free online content, and Blackboard.
Other required materials: EKU email address, Internet access, Facebook account,
YouTube account, access to webcam (optional, for optional video uploads).

Course Objectives: Upon successful completion of this course, students should be

able to
1. Identify trauma symptoms in bodies, texts, and films; analyze those
symptoms according to multiple trauma theories; and synthesize
primary/secondary “texts”;
2. Identify and analyze multiple types of psychological trauma, including
personal, betrayal, vicarious, cultural, and intergenerational;
3. Discuss various traumata in their social, historical, and political contexts;
4. Analyze personal archives (music, movies, books, etc) for “hidden” self-
hatred (internalized homophobia, for example) and synthesize according to
principles of trauma theories;
5. Produce written analyses of scriptotherapeutic artwork;
6. Participate in an informed way in WGS programming, including an end-of-
semester class project;
7. Investigate as a group and individually multiple themes evident in trauma
theory texts, including rapeability/unrapeability, identity crises,
psychosomatic connections, partner response/responsibility,
hypervigilance/hyperarousal, performance, safety, and narrative (story
telling); and
8. Articulate trauma’s immediate and prolonged impact, particularly on
attitudes, beliefs, self-esteem, decision making, synthesis abilities, and goal
setting; and

General Course Overview

The original course title, “American Trauma Narratives: Gender(ed) Violence and
Healing,” sets an ambitious trajectory for a single semester: it demands that we
examine American writings, bodies, films, and music to find clues not only about
the writers’ own trauma but also about your own. In this brief summer term, we’ll
watch video clips, read books and poetry, and scour contemporary American
culture for signs of trauma-awareness and the will (backed by a feminist political
movement) to heal. Throughout our search, we’ll discuss the way that gender
intersects with trauma, healing, and recovery in order to understand the myriad
ways males, females, transgenders, and intersexes experience our/their bodies,
minds, and sexualities. We’re not all having “male” and “female” experiences, as it
turns out; we’re all experiencing our genders differently, some vastly so. This
course seeks to better understand what causes psychological trauma, how those
traumas are stereotyped with gender biases, and how linking gender and trauma
leads us to unfairly labele some people “untraumatizable.”

Relying heavily on technology and self-education through participation and

activism, this course is designed to guide you through an introduction to
the ever-expanding and diverse fields of Women and Gender studies,
particularly feminism’s current focus on gendered psychological trauma.
As academic study of trauma is relatively new, textbooks are expensive
and hard to find, so in addition to the textbooks you should purchase (see
above), each of you will build your own reference manual that includes
sources not found in your textbook. I’ll help you to compile readings and
videos on women, men, feminism, masculinity, and sexuality so that by
the time the semester is over, you will understand the broad scope of the
intersecting and overlapping disciplines. This secondary text that you will
build yourself from extra class stuff as well as research you gather on
your own will aid you in your final project, a thorough study of one of the
sub-themes of this course: Rapeability/Unrapeability, Identity Crisis,
Psychosomatic connections, Intimate Partner response/responsibility,
Hypervigilance/hyperarousal, Performance, Safety, and Narrative (story-
telling) (see below for assignment description).

Each week, you will be responsible for 100-150 pages of reading from the
textbook, free Internet, novels, and PDF’d articles that I’ll send you through your
EKU email account. You should critically read each article and watch any
accompanying videos I post on Facebook, sometimes rereading or rewatching until
you’re sure you understand the scope of the readings. This class depends on your
enthusiastic engagement, so it’s up to you how much effort you put into
understanding difficult vocabulary or heretofore foreign concepts; you’d be
surprised at how much better you’ll understand new information if you keep a
dictionary site and a Google search screen up on your nearby computer. Take the
initiative in online summer classes to teach yourself. Each week, Monday through
Wednesday, you will have conversations with the instructor and other students
through informal, loose Facebook Wall chatter; this will take place on Facebook
Discussion Boards clearly labeled for each specific topic. At the end of each week,
on Thursdays and Fridays, you’ll post a more formal, academic response to the
wall of that week’s Facebook Event (see details below in Assignment Descriptions).
You can navigate to these separate sections of our Facebook Group using the tabs
at the top of the Facebook Group wall, primarily “Discussions” and “Events.” (Note
that you must mark Events as “Attending” before you can access the Events wall.)
At the end of the semester, you will post a final project that you will work on
throughout the semester (I will post the assignment description for this project no
later than week 2 of the semester as an email attachment; I will post on the
Facebook wall once I’ve sent the email so that you can get started right away). In
week three, you’ll post your research question, and by the last week, you’ll submit
a thorough response to your own question. Your semester grade will be
determined based on your weekly participation and active engagement on the
Discussion Boards and Events walls, as well as your creativity and presentation of
your final project. You should always keep in mind as you’re creating each week’s
informal and formal responses that your goal in doing so is to engage other
thinking minds in academic discussion about gender; mindless bickering should be
avoided.

Technology and Reading Component

This course depends heavily on technology and on reading. You will read
resources from the Internet, participate in Fb discussion boards, access information
through a variety of electronic means, prepare YouTube.com presentations, check
your email and spend a significant amount of time on Facebook daily. You will read
each week from the textbook or materials I link/send. I will say again: this course
relies heavily on reading and reading comprehension; in addition to the 100-or-so
pages you’ll read more formally for the class, you’ll also get to know other
classmates and the instructor primarily through textual interactions. Please be
aware before we even begin this semester that you will spend the majority of your
time interacting with me through writing and reading, although you have the
option of using alternative media for your responses (such as YouTube.com, see
below). This, of course, is to be expected from an online class of this duration.

Assignment Descriptions
Facebook Discussion Board Chatter
Mondays through Wednesdays, you will participate in a Discussion Board on Fb by
chiming in with your comments, concerns, questions, reactions, responses, etc.
These are informal, friendly discussions like the ones you would have in a lecture
classroom, a place where students should feel free to say what they want as long
as it’s respectful, thoughtful, and moves the conversation about gender forward
into new and unexplored territories (this can mean a variety of things to each
person in the course, as we all come from different gender histories). To prepare
for these DBs, you should read all or part of the material, stop in and browse the
site, then go back and finish reading or skim the readings for the week. You should
stop in and add your thoughts to the wall more than once a week; rather, you
should stay active on the walls and help others examine their own topics or
questions by constantly referring back to the text and to your own independent
research.

You should avoid making a lot of statements that begin with “I believe,”
challenging yourself instead to ask questions of the text or to apply the texts’
ideas to your own field of study, experiences, or observations. You should post
links to videos and websites you’ve found that address the topic under discussion
as well as responses to other students’ comments and questions; if you post
something, you should always contextualize it by telling why you’re posting it, how
it fits into the discussion we’re already having, or why it affirms/contests a topic
we’ve been considering. Similarly, be sure if you are responding to someone you
make it clear to whom and to what you’re responding so the students and I know
where your comment fits in to the larger discussion.

So much of our class depends on your ability to keep up with the readings and
forum-like discussions, so to facilitate that, you should make at least three
responses to each weekly Discussion Board and you should check back a few times
a week to read what others have said (and respond to others if you so choose). I
will also be contributing to the chatter with news articles, YouTube videos, and
other posts to expand our discussion outside of the confines of our textbook. So
should you! Discussion board chatter will count toward your weekly attendance
and in-class participation. You should spend approximately 45 minutes a day
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday catching up with the Fb chatter on DB walls,
which means you should be reading them thoroughly and offering thoughtful and
possibly even researched responses that will help us dive further into the notion of
psychological trauma.

These DBs are supposed to help each one of us as we conduct our own research on
our theme throughout the semester. Present some thoughts you’re trying to work
out in your mind and let other people react. Ask questions that your research is
bringing up and see how others, with their own research in mind, responds. It’s
meant to be a place for intellectual banter, much like a professional listserv, but
that means that your job is to bring research and helpful information, not your
personal beliefs, complaints, or stereotypes. Keeping the level of these DBs
“academic” and “professional” will require some boundary-setting and policing in
the first few weeks, but we’ll get it worked out together.

End-of-the-Week Facebook Events

At the end of each week, you will post a 500-word formal discussion of the week’s
topics onto the Event marked for that week. In this response, you should reference
all of the sources we’ve read from that week’s syllabus. You do not need to include
a Works Cited, but you should make sure that readers know which source you’re
using by supplying us with the name of the author as well as the title of the work.
You might even include a page number in parentheses if you’re referring to a
specific page. I’ll post new events weekly with questions for you to consider as
you’re reading, but you should feel free to take your own approach to these end-
of-week responses if you’ve really been pondering something and feel like you
need to express your thoughts about it. These Events postings might also be a way
for you to explore the theme you’ve chosen to research this semester; though you
can’t simply reproduce these shorter posts in your final paper, they could be good
places to work out some thoughts and keep track of how Herman’s or Allison’s
texts inform your theme of choice. These reflections should be academic in nature,
critically engaged, mature, and thoughtful. Your responses should be composed in
a word processor (like MS Word) so that you can insure good spelling and
grammar, then you should copy/paste them onto the wall of that week’s event.

To respond, you’ll first have to mark that you’re “Attending” the week’s events.
Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the opportunity to
add comments to the wall. Your first posted comment should be the title of your
posting; beneath the title, you should “respond” to your own post with the body of
your essay. I’ve given an example of this on week one’s Events wall.
Alternately, you can choose to respond each week via a video response, but you
must master YouTube on your own as we do not have time to teach it in this
course. If you choose to upload a video response rather than a written one, your
video must still reference all of the week’s readings, as explained above, and it
should be 5-7 minutes in duration. You can record yourself speaking into a webcam
or you can use video editing software to come up with something more creative
and dynamic. If you use YouTube.com, you should create an account, upload, and
then link us to the video in the appropriate Discussion Board or Event. If you
choose to create a video, you should insure that the video is of high quality, that
you’ve practiced what you will say so that your argument is cogent and well-
articulated. In short, your video should be as well-polished, revised, and edited as
the written work that you’d submit.

I will respond to these posts over the weekend, and in addition to grading the
responses with a point value (see below), I will let you know in my response what
you’re doing really well and where you might improve in the future. Your course
grade will reflect your ability to take my advice and suggestions and to build on
them in order to become a more academic and critically-engaged Women’s Studies
student.

Final Project: Theme Interrogations

This project will be announced shortly after the semester begins, and you will have
until the end of the term to complete it. It can be completed in the form of a 7-10
page essay response or a 10-15 minute YouTube video upload.

Course Policies
General Questions
I’ve created a Discussion Board on Facebook called “General Discussion” for your
general questions, comments, and concerns. Rather than emailing the instructor to
ask general questions or make general observations, you should post them here so
that other students can benefit from your questions and the responses that the
instructor or other students post. Feel free to ask anything here, and you should
also feel free to answer questions or comment if you know how to help a student in
need.

Facebook, Skype, and “Office Hours”

Because we will be using Facebook to conduct class, those who do not feel
comfortable sharing their “real” Facebook page with the group should create a
new account for the purposes of this class. If you choose to use your real Facebook
page, you should be aware of your privacy settings, which dictate who can see
what on your Facebook page, including wall posts, photos, comments, updates,
notes, etc. You can limit who sees what, and you do not have to ‘friend’ anyone in
our class in order to participate in Discussion Boards and Events in our group.

As the first block of information at the top of this document suggests, I will be
holding office hours throughout the semester via Facebook chat and Skype. These
office hours will not be scheduled, but if I’m at my computer reading your
responses, I will have both Facebook chat and Skype open; if you’ve friended me
on Facebook, or if you’ve added me on Skype, you should feel free to chat with me
when you see me online so that you can ask me questions about the course or just
talk through some issues you’re having with the work load, readings, and Facebook
layout. If you would like to meet with me at a specific time, send me a Facebook or
email message and we can negotiate a time to text chat using either of these
services. My Facebook address and Skype account are listed at the top of this
document.

Late Work
Absolutely no late work will be accepted during the semester without an extremely
worthwhile excuse (I’ll judge). Computer and technology problems are not
worthwhile excuses, so you should always be sure to save often and occasionally
email yourself assignments or upload the important ones to a web server or hard
drive. You can contact EKU’s ITDS at (859) 622-3000 for assistance with on-
campus Internet connections.

Grading
The semester’s assignments are listed below alongside their point values. You
should assume that you’re in good standing in the course unless I email you
specifically to encourage you to engage more specifically in some aspect of the
class. There’s no competition for grades here; everyone can get an A if each of you
demonstrates a willingness to think, participate, and critically engage the readings
and classroom discussions. Your grade will be lowered if you fail to participate,
critically read and respond, or fall behind in the assignments.

Weekly Participation and Engagement 10 points @ 7 weeks = 70

points
End-of-the-week Events Wall Postings 20 points @ 6 weeks = 120
points
Final Project 60 points 60 points

A 90-100%
B 80-89%
C 70-79%
D 60-69%
F below 60%

Academic Honesty
Students are advised that EKU's Academic Integrity Policy will strictly be enforced
in this course. The Academic Integrity policy is available at
www.academicintegrity.eku.edu. Questions regarding the policy may be directed
to the Office of Academic Integrity. I consider academic dishonesty at this level of
education to be any use of anyone else’s words or work without giving them proper
credit (in this class, this means citing the name of your source and its author,
either through parenthetical citations or through speaking their names in video
posts). It also means you can’t reuse assignments from other classes or
concurrently submit assignments in two classes. If you plagiarize, you will receive
an F on the assignment.

Attendance
I’ll take attendance every week to insure that you’re responding to one another
and keeping up with the online chatter. You should strive to spend approximately
45 minutes to one hour a day on Facebook catching up and adding your voice in
the form of comments, questions, and critical interpretations, both of the content
you’ve read and the content that’s been posted by myself and your classmates.
This one hour a day on Facebook is the equivalent to the one hour a day you would
spend in a summer class. The readings are, of course, to be done outside of this
class time, much like they’d be done outside of class were we meeting face-to-
face. As you know if you’ve taken summer classes before, keeping up with the
pace of the work is half the battle. You should set aside approximately 2.5 hours
each weekday to complete all of the assigned readings, viewings, chatter, and
discussion.

Respect Clause
Class time is for sharing ideas about the topic at hand. Respect your classmates
and me by treating people kindly. This means reading each others’ posts with open
minds, critically thinking instead of dismissing comments without thought. I have
the right to ask you to leave if you continuously disrespect the class. Also
remember that Facebook and MySpace are public networks, and the things you
say or post on these sites get around. Respect yourself and respect others.

Disabilities Statement
If you are registered with the Office of Services for Individuals with Disabilities,
please make an appointment with the course instructor to discuss any academic
accommodations you need. If you need academic accommodations and are not
registered with the Office of Services for Individuals with Disabilities, please
contact the office on the third floor of the Student Services Building, by email at
disabilities@eku.edu or by telephone at (859) 622-2933 V/TDD. Upon individual
request, this syllabus can be made available in alternative forms.

Tentative Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Below, you’ll find the tentative schedule of assignments. Readings or postings

below marked with an asterisk (*) will be posted on Facebook as links to the free
Internet or they will be sent to you at the beginning of the week as a PDF through
your EKU email. Those not marked with an asterisk can be found in your textbooks.
Some readings are extremely short; others are a bit longer. I ask that you read and
reread each article until you understand the content (some are more difficult than
others).

The four columns are as follows:

Week/Date—this gives the calendar week of the course.
Topic—this column briefly notes the general topic the week’s readings and
discussions will address
Readings—this column spells out for you the readings or videos you should read
and/or view
Response Assignments—reminds you of each week’s Fb responsibilities

Readings Response
Week/Date Topic
Assignments
Introduction to Herman, pages 1-32 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall
1 Psychological *Caruth, “Violence and chatter
June 7-11 Trauma Time: Traumatic
Survivals” (JSTOR) Thur-Fri – Events
 *Komunyakaa, “After Posting
Summer Fell Apart”

Herman, 33-74 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

*Turner, 3 selections chatter
Terror, (Fb)
2
Disconnection & *Hecht, “A Hill” (Fb) Thur-Fri – Events
June 14-18
War Trauma *Komunyakaa, “Facing Posting
It” (Fb)

Herman, 74-114 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

Allison, chapters 1-5 chatter
*Olds, “I Go Back to May
3 Powerlessness &
1937” (Fb) Thur-Fri – Events
June 21-25 Childhood
Posting: Research
Question

Herman, 155-95 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

4 Recovery, Allison, chapters 6-10 chatter
June 28- Safety, *Lorde, “A Litany for
July 2 & Mourning Survival” (Fb) Thur-Fri – Events
Posting
Herman, 197-247 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall
Allison, chapters 11-15 chatter
5 Reconnecting to
July 5-9 The World Thur-Fri – Events
Posting

Allison, chapters 16-22 Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

(end) chatter
Bastard Out of
6 *Bouson, “White Trash
Carolina
July 12-16 Shame” (Project Thur-Fri – Events
Wrapup
Muse) Posting

*BalladofBirmingham.or Mon-Wed – DB/Wall

g (Fb) chatter
*Young, “Children of a
Lesser God” (Fb)
7 Survivor Poetry/
*Pellegrinelli, “Artist
July 19-23 Commemoration
Tattoos Indelible Iraq
Memorial Into His
Skin” (Fb)

Reread your notes for

the theme you chose Final Theme
Theme
Final and write/record your Presentation
Discussion
synthesis of this theme.