Navigating Trauma in Feminist Classrooms: Teaching for Justice in Pandemic Times, with Dr. Julie Kubala

Covid-19 has inspired an intensification of interest in the role that trauma plays in pedagogical practices. While the pandemic has enabled a wider recognition of “crisis-ordinariness” (Lauren Berlant), the strategies for addressing trauma in the classroom may still reinscribe individual interventions to structural problems. This talk will explore ways to recognize the fundamental imbrication of individual and systemic violence, in order to resist the institutional compulsion to manage trauma, rather than address the injustices that contribute to its endemic nature. 

Beyond Trigger Warnings: Teaching To Sexual Assault Survivors Instead of Around Them, with Dr. Nicole Bedera

Over the past decade, debates about how—or whether—to teach students about sexual violence have captured national attention. Primarily, these conversations have focused on whether survivors require a trigger warning before instructors assign violent materials. But what if we have been taking the wrong approach? In this talk, Dr. Bedera combines her experiences as a researcher, educator, and former victim advocate to propose a trauma-informed pedagogy that focuses on avoiding institutional betrayal in the classroom and prepares instructors for the unique challenges of teaching classes on sexual assault.

Julie Kubala is Principal Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. She teaches courses on feminist and queer theory, Foucault, activism, class, globalization, and feminist pedagogy. Her current research focuses on feminist pedagogy and the various challenges involved in developing an anti-sexist, anti-racist, trans-affirming social justice praxis in an increasingly neoliberal university and in an increasingly polarized political space.

Nicole Bedera, Ph.D. is a sociologist and author of the forthcoming book On the Wrong Side: How Universities Betray Survivors to Protect Perpetrators of Sexual Assault. Her research broadly focuses on how our social structures contribute to survivors’ trauma and make sexual violence more likely to occur in the future. Her scholarship has influenced sexual violence prevention programming across the country, including for Planned Parenthood, and her work has been featured in many popular outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, BBC, CNN, Time Magazine, Slate, USA Today, and Teen Vogue.