Difficult Dialogues: How to Teach and Talk about Narratives of Sexual Violence

 

According to a 2016 U.S. Bureau of Justice report, 21% of undergraduate female students and 7% of male students (of all years) experience some form of sexual assault. Only 7% of these campus rapes are reported to any university official.  Of survivors who remained on campus, 30% reported academic problems and 21% considered dropping out.  Many others did not remain and were not included in the survey. 

 

Clearly, in appropriate disciplines, professors need and want to engage students in classroom discussions about this critical topic. But how best to tackle such a sensitive subject? One way involves the use of texts addressing the issue in a host of ways.

The Alaska Quarterly Review , UAA's nationally lauded literary journal, recently hosted a public event that featured a dramatic reading of the acclaimed essay White Horse by Eliese Colette Goldbach, which describes an on-campus rape; the reading was followed by a panel discussion. This session offers a followup to that conversation, and will introduce educators to a number of strategies drawn from UAA's internationally recognized Difficult Dialogues publication, Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education. Join us to explore the range of tools available to instructors seeking to effectively help their students explore these issues in an academic setting.

For additional information about this topic please contact the Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence uaa_cafe@alaska.edu