Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation considers how dominant narratives emerging after school shootings in the United States unwrite, overwrite, and erase other narratives about survivor and community experiences of gun violence; the educational implications of these erasures; and how campus community members use vernacular modes of expression to respond to them.

Paper Abstract:

A unique factor of the American educational system is the omnipresent threat of gun violence in school settings, which reflects the larger culture of gun violence in the United States. A typical performance follows each school shooting: a community outpouring of disbelief and grief, political messages that share “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and survivors, followed by political gridlock forestalling meaningful legislative change to prevent future shootings. Eventually, students, faculty, and staff return to the scene of violence and attempt to resume the work of education. Bolstered by recognizable generic forms of expressive culture that have emerged in the wake of these shootings, this return to school is marked by the collective performance of a unifying narrative foregrounding community strength, recovery, and healing in the face of gun violence. Such dominant narratives about gun violence “unwrite” the ongoing trauma and violence experienced by individuals and communities. This “unwriting” serves to restrict survivors from sharing their stories and also limits public discourse surrounding the costs of gun violence.

This presentation considers how these dominant narratives after school shootings unwrite, overwrite, and erase other narratives about survivor and community experiences with gun violence, and the educational implications of these erasures. Attending to the generic forms of expressive culture that support these narratives, we also examine how vernacular artifacts such as informal memorials, zines, and hallway art produced in the wake of one university mass shooting directly respond to the “unwriting” of survivors’ experiences and confront dominant narratives about gun violence.