Teaching Slow Violences: A Rhetoric of Othering and Systemic Silencing
- Bronte Wieland (Iowa State University)
Abstract
How can teachers spur students to critically examine the media they consume as well as their social, academic, and professional environments in order to foment productive dialogues on race, ethnicity, and beyond? In a world of fake news, instantaneously revised history, and Trumpism, these dialogues are crucial, especially in courses focused on composition, rhetoric, and critical thinking. By understanding social injustice as violence through the loss of individual and collective agency and by examining issues of slow violence (as proposed by Rob Nixon in 2011), we outline methods for engaging students in discussions on new critical perspectives. We’ll be discussing how instructors can approach slow, systemic, overlooked, and barely visible violences comfortably and constructively in the classroom to encourage students to direct their critical thinking skills to the world around them. Classroom discussion topics include: film, literature, music, race, gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, climate change, agriculture, oppression, and their intersections.