ENGL 103 A02: Case Studies in Research: Reading Life Stories in a Post-Truth Era

A. Spallacci

In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" as the word of the year. The editors state that they selected "post-truth" because they observed a "spike in frequency" within which people used the term throughout the year; they attribute this spike to "the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States" (n.p.). Oxford Dictionaries defines post-truth as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief" (n.p.). This definition builds on Stephen Colbert's term "truthiness," which he coined in 2005 and defines as "the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support" (n.p.). Narratives of misinformation—disguised as truthful—are dangerous; people and institutions rely on these narratives to justify the numerous forms of oppression they enact against marginalized groups. How do we identify and work towards challenging these oppressive narratives?

Our course materials demonstrate how some artists and cultural producers engage in this work by participating in acts of remembering; they recall their lived experiences, relations, and connections and translate them into creative forms that they circulate and share with others. These texts can be productively disruptive as they challenge the oppressive narratives circulating in the public sphere. To radically and meaningfully engage with our course texts, students will learn how to adopt an intersectional research methodology that will model for them how to think critically about the significant ways these texts can shape, engage with, or challenge cultural norms and power relations. This course will encourage students to reflect on how they listen and learn from our course texts as well as how they can use their social power to be accountable to one another, our learning community, and to the communities whose stories we study.