Paper short abstract:

This paper describes trauma-informed approaches for teaching medical anthropology with a focus on building community with a small class size.

Paper long abstract:

At a small liberal arts institution in Florida in the United States, I teach undergraduate students about culture, ethnographic methods, health, healthcare, and inequality where anthropologists find it around the world. I believe that my teaching style has always embraced and conveyed a sense of care and justice for humanity, but a few years ago I transitioned from Universal Design for Learning into a fully integrated, obvious, and unapologetic use of trauma-informed pedagogy. As a medical anthropologist, I encourage my students to view illnesses and health systems as reflections of socio-cultural values. To increase students’ empathy and understanding of evidence, I employ trauma-informed pedagogy, a style that minimizes traumatization while still meeting educational goals and objectives. This pedagogical style acknowledges negative potential impacts of traumatization and re-traumatization that can arise from discussing difficult or controversial subjects. Rather than focus on the trauma that students may have encountered, I have been primarily interested in preventing retraumatization and traumatization in students for whom this information is new to them (but maybe shouldn’t be). In keeping with trauma-informed pedagogy, I include numerous opportunities for student choice such as choosing presentation dates, assignments with rolling deadlines, and choice of prompt for take-home exams. My teaching style embraces active learning, is purposefully trauma-informed, and encourages community engagement. For this paper, I will explain in detail my decision making for designing my anthropology courses using trauma-informed pedagogy.