ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5140-7894

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

English (Ph.D.)

Department

English

First Advisor

Granville Ganter

Second Advisor

Jennifer Travis

Third Advisor

Charles S Combs

Abstract

This dissertation argues for the value of acknowledging students' emotions in the writing classroom, inspired by a pedagogy which has generated extensive controversy over the past 30 years. This project investigates how writing teachers might carefully allow students to harness their emotional reactions as they write. My project’s first chapter defends the value of victims' stories and the ''talking cure,'' following an explanation of how this psychological work would be introduced to a classroom setting, and with what tools, recognizing the potential disruptions that trauma may bring to a learning space. My second chapter turns to writing teachers who have employed this strategy in various ways. In chapter three, I turn to writers who have written about their own psychological pain. This is a chapter analyzing the kinds of primary literary texts one might use in a college classroom to encourage students on their own personal explorations. My fourth chapter discusses class pedagogy through the dramatization of films where faculty face administrative resistance to asking their students to engage in emotional expression. Chapter four speaks to the longstanding trope of how Hollywood’s fictionalized educators have been beset by administrators, while attempting to enable students to engage with their emotions as part of their education. My fifth and final chapter narrates my own experiences as a filmmaker while discussing my creative and pedagogical work in the wake of the Parkland shooting. While I too attempt to juxtapose my own story to match the types of plots seen throughout Hollywood films in teachers, I stand clear that I make no attempt to anoint myself as the savior that pop culture depicts educators to be. Rather, I see myself as a person who simply works hard to humanize the learning space as a caring and emotionally available person. Although this project was initially inspired by personal trauma in the aftermath of a shooting, the findings in this work are applicable to all students who wish to unburden themselves of traumatic experience, as well as those from non-traditional educational backgrounds, which is a growing part of student populations today.

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