Troubling Sympathy: Teaching Refugee Narratives

• Published in: Journal of curriculum theorizing Vol. 32; no. 3; pp. 61 - 78
• Main Author: Macdonald, Michael T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Rochester Foundation for Curriculum Theory 01.09.2018
• Subjects: Audiences; Beah, Ishmael; Biographies; Consumption; Curricula; Eggers, Dave; Emotional Response; Empathy; Essays; Evacuations & rescues; High School Students; Learner Engagement; Military Personnel; Narratives; Phenomenology; Psychological Patterns; Reading Programs; Reflection; Refugees; Student Participation; Student writing; Sympathy; Writing Instruction; Writing Processes; New York; Thousand Oaks California; United States > US
• ISSN: 1942-2563

According to Lili Chouliaraki (2006), spectators might express an "awareness" of distant suffering and enter a "process of deliberation" in which "they are always part of an ongoing conversation, even if this conversation takes place in the confines of their own homes - indeed, as a whisper" (p. 45). [...]a cursory review of scholarship shows that the above excerpt-"Survivors tell the stories the sympathetic want"-has appeared in at least nine peer-reviewed publications in areas such as biographical studies (Peek, 2012; Smith & Watson, 2012), African and postcolonial literature (Goyal, 2014; Krishnan, 2015; Moynagh, 2011), as well as literacy studies, cultural studies, and English studies (MacDonald, 2015; Geertsma, 2012; Powell, 2012; Varvogli, 2012). In the Michigan course, students examined communities they might see themselves as a part of and how those groups were represented through images, metaphors, and other discourses. [...]while I assigned refugee narratives in both classes, the student writing from one class more directly (though not exclusively) addressed the questions raised in this paper. According to Boltanksi (2009), the "subject who is describing" (p. 24) can benefit from a "vague" subject position.