Course assistant for RCHUMS 337 - Children Under Fire: Narratives of Sustainability.

Responsible for taking attendance, providing tech assistance, and tabulation of free writes online. Assist with the organization and preparation of instructional materials and grading. Provide support to instructor during group activities and presentation of student projects.

 

Brief course description: During an era of world focus on child refugees, planetary changes, and a global pandemic, we look at hardships —stigma, displacement, self-injury — in historical narratives and current stories unfolding. In diverse genres, from horror story to high adventure, young heroes sustain themselves in the face of adult decisions regarding scarcity (food and water), violence, illness, and abuse. This environmental humanities seminar examines how early reading mediates crises in picture books, YA biography, social media, and contemporary film. Drawing on theories of trauma, we analyze the recording of personal agency and witness in juvenile diaries, letters, and memoir. Eclectic approaches and hands-on practices of art will help us track these growing-up stories which illuminate profound contrasts and unusual assumptions about atrocity, pain and healing. The images and stories in this course touch on emotionally volatile subjects. There may also be moments when class material affects participants in unanticipated ways.