The Trigger Warning and the Pathologizing White Rhetoric of

Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

Mara Lee Grayson

Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, Volume 4, Number 4, Fall 2021, pp. 413-445
(Article)

Published by University Press of Florida

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/854467

[ Access provided at 15 Aug 2022 12:32 GMT from JHU Libraries ]

Rhetoric of Health & Medicine
Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 413–445
DOI: 10.5744/rhm.4002

The Trigger Warning and the

Pathologizing White Rhetoric
of Trauma-­Informed Pedagogy
Mara Lee Grayson

In this article, I analyze the trigger warning, a pedagogical practice often framed
as student-­ responsive and trauma-­ informed, to elucidate the ways in which
trauma-­informed pedagogy functions rhetorically to pathologize and individual-
ize experiences of racism and other societal inequities that cause collective trauma.
I draw upon original interview data and rhetorical analysis through a systems
framework to explore how reductive pedagogical practices developed within the
confines of a White, western notion of trauma may subsequently perpetuate stu-
dents’ marginalization. Finally, I highlight the potential for more comprehensive,
inclusive pedagogies to address student trauma, acknowledge societal conditions
that impact individual experiences, and shift popular discourse that pathologizes
trauma.

Keywords: Education, Mental health, Racism, White fragility

Since Slate magazine dubbed 2013 “the year of the trigger warning” (Mar-
cotte, 2013), the trigger warning, a brief statement intended to inform audi-
ences of potentially upsetting or re-­traumatizing material, has been a topic
of considerable public and professional discussion and debate, particularly
regarding its usage in the classroom. While those who oppose its usage
argue that it is a threat to intellectual development (Lukianoff & Haidt,
2015) and academic freedom (AAUP, 2014), advocates suggest that, as a

© 2022 University of Florida Press

 The Trigger Warning and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

“counter-­public practice,” the trigger warning (hereon TW) “can function

to ‘publicize’ structural violence” (Washick, 2017, p. 103). In academic spaces,
it may function as a trauma-­informed practice that brings awareness to men-
tal illness (Orem & Simpkins, 2015) and invites students to define the
terms of their own engagement (McFarland, 2017).
This view of the TW aligns with perspectives on trauma-­informed
pedagogies, more generally speaking. Advocates of trauma-­informed ped-
agogies suggest that such practices acknowledge the prevalence of stu-
dent trauma (Thomas et al., 2019) and honor the complex lives of members
of the classroom rather than “expecting students to separate the academic
and the personal” (Storla, 2017, p. 197). Such pedagogies, therefore, may
serve rhetorically to challenge dominant notions of instruction and educa-
tion that perpetuate a false dichotomy between cognition and emotion and
force students to adapt to the classroom rather than adapting the classroom
to its students. To point, trauma studies across the disciplines generally are
concerned “more with the effects of trauma on society than on individu-
als” (Carello & Butler, 2014, p.  155) and view “individual behaviors as
instances of broader cultural symptoms” (Berger, 2004, p. 565).
Paradoxically, the dominant understanding of trauma-­based stress
frames trauma as individual rather than social or societal. Trauma, as defined
within the context of post-­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the pages
of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-­5 ), denotes
“actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence” (APA, 2013,
p. 271) but is limited to immediate, individual stressors and does not include
long-­term or collective stressors, such as life-­t hreatening illness or racial
trauma. As Emily Johnston (2020) points out, the classification of PTSD
in the DSM-­5 rhetorically “shores up a biomedical model of health in which
the individual patient/survivor functions as the primary subject of analysis
for disease, in contrast to a public health model oriented around the health
of whole groups or communities” and “reproduces colonizing arrangements
of power as DSM-­5 discourse circulates in the professional and public con-
texts” (p. 3).
This framing makes it particularly difficult to design trauma-­informed
pedagogies around racism. Though racism results in individualized experi-
ences and incidences of racial trauma, the danger that results from the
“threats of harm and injury, humiliating and shaming events, and witness-
ing harm to other people of color due to real or perceived racism” (Comas-­
Diaz et al., 2019, p. 1) is collective, recurrent, and perpetuated by societal

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structures. Moreover, racial trauma exists within a sociopolitical context

that perpetuates re-­traumatization (Alvarez et al., 2016; Sibrava et al., 2019).
Educational structures contribute to that context.
What does this mean for educators seeking to create trauma-­informed
pedagogies in White hegemonic classrooms? In this article, I analyze the
trigger warning, a controversial pedagogical practice often framed as
trauma-­informed, to elucidate the ways in which trauma-­informed peda-
gogy functions rhetorically to pathologize and individualize experiences of
racism and other societal injustices that cause collective trauma. I explore
this dynamic to highlight the need for more comprehensive, inclusive ped-
agogies that address student trauma, acknowledge societal conditions that
impact individual experiences, and shift popular discourse that pathologizes
human suffering and maintains the status quo.

Literature Review: Trauma, Schooling,

and White Supremacy
White supremacy is a system (Mills, 1997) that, through law and policy, offi-
cial structures and institutions, and distribution of material resources, shapes
and sustains racism and White privilege (Leonardo, 2009; Mills, 1997). The
structures and systems of White supremacy in the United States normalize
dominant racial ideology and thus render many of its workings invisible
(Guinier, 2004). Two such structures are higher education and the mental
healthcare system.
Regardless of individual instructors’ antiracist intentions, the existing
systems of public schooling and higher education in the U.S. both cater to
and perpetuate White normative epistemologies and pedagogies. As mem-
bers of the “primary institutions that reproduce dominant social and eco-
nomic orders, customs and belief systems” (Keisch & Scott, 2015, p. 2),
educators are complicit in a system that rhetorically and materially centers
Whiteness and devalues the knowledges, histories, languages, and bodies
of people of color. Because “a culture’s dominant tropes become embodied
in all people via socialization . . . ​some people’s bodies in the U.S. may be
coded as White, but all people’s bodies in the U.S. are socialized by White-
ness as a racial category” (Kennedy et al., 2005, p. 363). Through governmental
and curricular policy, academic discourse, and White western epistemo-
logical traditions, the White mind is rhetorically positioned as a norm
from which other minds and bodies deviate. This occurs both on the micro

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level, pertaining to the individual student mind and body, and the macro
level, with regards to the bodies of knowledge and ways of knowing that
predominate in academic institutions. Composition instruction, in particu-
lar, perpetuates White knowledge and discourses that marginalize and
oppress students of color (Inoue, 2016; Kareem, 2019; Martinez, 2009;
Ruiz & Sanchez, 2016).
Likewise, the “mental healthcare system functions rhetorically as a model
of normalcy” (Johnston, 2020, p. 9). In other words, the various actors and
texts of the mental healthcare system, including insurance companies, profes-
sional and regulating organizations, medical education, and authoritative
texts such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-­5 ),
shape the public’s perspective of normal mental health and pathological
mental disorder. Because the accepted concept of mental wellness is White
(Alvarez et al., 2016; Comas-­Diaz et al., 2019), western colonial (Johnston,
2020), and masculine (Boler, 1999), the mental healthcare system shores up a
model of mental health that reinforces the White psyche and body as norma-
tive and universal, even when traumatized, while simultaneously overlooking
and marginalizing the traumatic experiences of people of color.
Though these systems are distinct, they overlap considerably, particu-
larly as discussions of mental health increase due in part to public health
efforts to destigmatize mental illness. Emily Johnston (2020) has suggested
that due to the prevalence of mass gun violence in the U.S. and the result-
ing discourse around PTSD, the rhetorical interrogation of the “classifica-
tion of post-­traumatic stress as a mental disorder is public and not exclusively
professional/clinical work” (p. 8). In few spaces is this truer today than the
classroom. Due to increased awareness of the impact of childhood trauma
(Kataoka et al., 2012; Thomas et al., 2019), the prevalence of sexual assault
on college campuses (Krebs et al., 2007; RAINN, 2019), and the experi-
ences of military veterans in college classrooms (Glover-­Graf et al., 2010;
Lopez et al., 2015), as well as the longstanding emphasis on culturally sus-
taining and critical pedagogies (hooks, 1994; Paris, 2012), particularly in the
humanities and social sciences, trauma theories have impacted instruction
in “nonclinical courses such as literature, women’s studies, film, education,
anthropology, cultural studies, composition, and creative writing” (Carello
& Butler, 2014, p. 153).
Teaching about trauma, however, is not synonymous with trauma-­
informed teaching. Though some psychologists have suggested that the risk
of secondary traumatization in the classroom is overstated (Zurbriggen,

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2011), others have argued that teaching about trauma without developing
student-­responsive pedagogies and frameworks for teaching such material
may re-­traumatize students (Carello & Butler, 2014). This has led teachers
of courses across the curriculum to implement trauma-­informed pedagogi-
cal practices that might mitigate the potential negative impact of this mate-
rial on students’ psychological and emotional well-­being.
While teachers and scholars working in the subfield of rhetoric of health
and medicine may be particularly interested in the rhetorical impact of
trauma-­informed classroom practices, trauma-­informed pedagogies may
also be of interest to educators of composition and rhetoric more broadly.
Though composition curricula vary, students in composition classes are
likely to engage with a broad range of texts and discussion topics that are
personal in nature and that may address sensitive, controversial, or poten-
tially traumatic subject matter, making the composition classroom an
important site for consideration of the application and efficacy of trauma-­
informed pedagogies. That the field of writing studies has yet to develop a
comprehensive framework for trauma-­informed writing pedagogy (Day,
2019) further necessitates this situated line of inquiry.
Trauma psychologist Kathryn Becker-­Blease (2017) has warned that,
as interest in trauma-­informed practice proliferates, it is imperative that
scholars and clinicians “be vigilant about the term trauma-­informed”
(p. 131). Thus far, there has been little research on the validity of the infor-
mation provided by the increasing number of programs that claim to train
nonexperts in trauma-­informed practice, which has resulted in what Becker-­
Blease has called “too big of a tent” for practices that are trauma-­informed.
Some of the practices commonly listed as trauma-­informed on publicly
accessible websites, such as ensuring clean facilities, are “just plain com-
mon sense” and “are not necessarily especially beneficial for trauma survi-
vors” (pp. 132–133).
Janice Carello and Lisa D. Butler (2014) offer the following definition
of trauma-­informed practice in any context, including but not limited to
the classroom: “to understand how violence, victimization, and other trau-
matic experiences may have figured in the lives of the individuals involved
and to apply that understanding to the provision of services and the design
of systems so that they accommodate the needs and vulnerabilities of trauma
survivors” (p. 156). Two points are key here: first, that much of trauma-­
informed practice is about preparation and conceptual understanding of
how trauma manifests in the classroom; and second, that the “design of

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systems” that are trauma-­informed is just as important as the trauma-­

informed “provision of services” within those systems.
In the editors’ introduction to the 2020 issue of Rhetoric of Health &
Medicine, which focused on mental health rhetoric research, Cathryn Mol-
loy, Drew Holladay, and Lisa Melonçon suggest that “few research topics
in the rhetoric of health and medicine are as rich and incendiary as are men-
tal health-­related inquiries” (p. iv). Rhetorical research into mental health
“distinguishes itself through a focus on discursive and symbolic
communication—­especially acts of persuasion and identification” (p. iv). As
teachers increasingly are called upon to attend pedagogically to the mental
health and well-­being of their students, it is all the more necessary that those
of us whose teaching likewise emphasizes discourse and persuasion exam-
ine the rhetorical impacts of our own trauma-­informed pedagogies.
Focusing on the trigger warning as a trauma-­informed pedagogical
practice, in the following pages I draw upon the findings of original research
and rhetorical analysis through an activity systems framework to examine
the functions of the trigger warning in the postsecondary writing classroom.
More broadly, this essay contributes to the body of work on trauma in writ-
ing studies (Batzer, 2016; Borrowman, 2005; Molloy, 2016; Spear, 2013)
and extends rhetorical examinations of mental healthcare as an activity sys-
tem (Berkenkotter, 2001; Johnston, 2020) to trauma-­informed pedagogy,
an important yet understudied area of research given the broad, varied, and
potentially problematic interpretations of trauma-­informed practice (Becker-­
Blease, 2017) in the postsecondary classroom. This essay further explores
how the intersections between the mental healthcare system and system of
postsecondary education function in the classroom, simultaneously and
symbiotically, to support the system of White supremacy under which both
subsystems reside.

Methodology
Based on casual conversations in department hallways and on social media,
composition instructors appear to be interested in the trigger warning and
its implications, but aside from Sarah Orem and Neil Simpkins’s (2015)
analysis of the TW as “weepy rhetoric—­a method of calling attention to
pain through language” (n.p.) and my own analysis of the TW as catering
to White fragility (Grayson, 2020), scholarship on the TW in the compo-
sition classroom is quite limited. I have found in my review of the literature

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no published empirical research to date that examines the use of TWs spe-
cifically in postsecondary composition instruction. My searches of programs
from annual conventions of the Conference on College Composition and
Communication since 2013 unearthed only three sessions in which the TW
was a central topic.
To explore if and how the trigger warning functions as trauma-­informed
pedagogy, this article draws upon an activity systems framework (Engeström,
1987; Engeström, 2009) that allows for an understanding of human activ-
ity as complex and contextual. Activity systems frameworks originating in
the social sciences have been taken up by scholars of composition and rhet-
oric via “writing, activity, and genre research” in which “context is not sep-
arated from activity, or from texts, which are seen as tools for the mediation
of activity” (Russell, 2009, p. 41). Texts, after all, are “part of human activity”
and serve to “mediate between people, activate their thoughts, direct their
attention, coordinate their actions, [and] provide the means of relation-
ship” (Bazerman & Russell, 2002, p. 1). The trigger warning does the same.
Viewed through an activity systems framework, the trigger warning can
be seen as both a genre and a text-­in-­context that, persuasively and implic-
itly, structures human activity within the system of a classroom. In class-
rooms, texts “create realities, or facts, for students and teachers” through
both explicit statements and “the structures of relationship and activity they
establish implicitly simply by fitting together in an organized way of life”
(Bazerman, 2003, p. 311).
An activity systems-­influenced analysis allows for the exploration of the
genre of the trigger warning within the context of the classroom by exam-
ining when instructors engage with this genre, in what contexts, for what
purposes, and with which particular audiences. It also allows for the explo-
ration of the trigger warning as a system itself. In activity theory, the sys-
tem, as the unit of analysis, is the locus where knowledge is created,
mediated, and disseminated. The six components of any activity system
include the subjects, the people involved in the central activity and who are
the primary subject of analysis; the motives (or objectives) of those partici-
pating in the central activity; the larger community that shares those goals;
the division of labor within the system; the rules governing action and
interaction within the system; and the material or conceptual instruments or
artifacts produced or used by participants (Engeström, 1987).
There are other, larger systems at work as well. In Yrjö Engeström’s
third generation activity theory (1987), “schooling is analyzed as dynamics

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within and interplay between the activity systems of the student and the
teacher” as well as “other relevant activity systems” and is accompanied by
“analysis of agency, experiencing, and emotion” (Engeström & Glavenou,
2012, p. 516). This focus on interacting activity systems offers a particularly
useful framework for understanding the intersections between multiple sys-
tems impacting any equitable, trauma-­informed pedagogy: the mental
healthcare system, the system of education, the system of each particular
classroom, and the system of racism and White supremacy under which the
aforementioned systems may be conceived as subsystems.
Asao B. Inoue (2012) has pointed out that there is a dearth of “atten-
tion to the ways race functions and is produced by our research methods”
in writing studies (p. 125). Though Inoue is speaking specifically about writing
assessment, his statement is significant across the board in composition,
rhetoric, and the rhetoric of health and medicine: If our research meth-
ods are rooted in White, western theoretical frameworks, we are limited in
our ability to “address directly the structural problems” that lead to educa-
tional inequity (p.  127). Relatedly, and speaking specifically of activity
theory, Zeus Leonardo and Logan Manning (2015) have noted that the
Vygotskian theories that have influenced activity theory do not fully address
diverse students’ learning “within the condition of Whiteness” (p. 3).
However, because third-­generation activity theory emphasizes the
potential for transformation and change within organization systems, there
is potential within this framework to incorporate (counter)systems of anti-
racism and equity-­focused pedagogies as well. Leonardo and Manning spe-
cifically suggest that because Engeström’s (1987) framework works to
identify “how the new is generated” (p. 2, emphasis in original), it can in
fact be part of an antiracist project that teaches toward the unlearning and
undoing of Whiteness. Thus, I further draw upon what Leonardo and
Manning call a “White Historical Activity System” to also analyze how
Whiteness functions alongside the trigger warning as another sign system
that organizes experience and mediates knowledge in all aspects of educa-
tion. That Leonardo and Manning’s framework specifically calls out White-
ness, which is so often unmarked and unnamed, serves as an important
antidote to the large body of research in which “methods do not assume
a need to investigate Whiteness” as it manifests in the classroom (Inoue,
2012, p.  131). I am confident that this framework adds to this research
what Inoue (2012) might identify as a racial methodology, one that uses
“informed theories of race and account[s] for racial formations in collecting

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data, forming hypotheses, making observations, and drawing conclusions”

(p. 128).
In the immediate activity system surrounding the usage of the trigger
warning, teachers and students can be viewed as the subjects involved in
the central activity (the use of the trigger warning) within the larger com-
munity of the education system. Subjects use the written or oral utterance
of the trigger warning itself to work toward the presumed objectives of cre-
ating a safe space for student engagement and preventing re-­traumatization.
Other components of the system may be less clear: What rules govern this
system? When does one use the trigger warning? How does one determine
when a trigger warning is warranted? Once a trigger warning is activated,
on whose shoulders rests the brunt of the labor? What motives underlie the
trigger warning’s stated objectives? What part does Whiteness play in this
system?
To answer some of these questions and to take up Guy Boysen’s (2017)
call to move beyond decontextualized “argument and rhetoric” in scholar-
ship on TWs (p. 163), I draw upon two sources of data: a survey conducted
by the National Coalition against Censorship (NCAC, 2015) into the uses
of and attitudes toward the trigger warning among more than 800 post-
secondary instructors across the United States and an original survey I
designed and distributed to postsecondary instructors of composition and
rhetoric in 2019 to learn where, when, and by whom the TW is used in
college-­level composition instruction.
I received approval from my university’s institutional review board prior
to data collection.1 Because I had already done considerable textual research
on the use of the trigger warning in disciplines outside of composition and
rhetoric prior to data collection, I employed the survey to determine the
extent to which the trigger warning’s usage in composition classes reflected
earlier findings from other contexts. Though there are admittedly limita-
tions to the use of surveys in research, I chose to rely upon survey method-
ology because “surveys provide a means for teachers to learn what others
are doing, thinking, or feeling about a particular subject” (Anderson et al.,
2006, p. 60; see also Lauer & Asher, 1988; Teston et al., 2019). Like Daniel
Anderson and colleagues (2006), who used survey methods in their explo-
ration of multimodal instruction in U.S. colleges, I relied upon the survey

1
This research is part of a larger project supported by a 2018–19 Emergent Researcher Grant
from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

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 The Trigger Warning and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

“to get a contemporary snapshot” (p. 66) of the TW’s usage in college com-
position classrooms nationwide.
To obtain this snapshot, I included questions designed to learn when
respondents used the trigger warning, if, like some teachers have reported,
they felt pressured to use a trigger warning (NCAC, 2015), and whether or
not they agreed with common arguments made about the trigger warning
in contemporary popular and scholarly discourse. I also inquired as to
respondents’ institution type and geographic location, and, following Inoue’s
(2012) advice to “collect racial data . . . ​that can be linked to other data” and
to “consider the broad racial categories” employed in the research (p. 136),
I invited participants to self-­identity by race and/or ethnicity as well as gen-
der. (See Appendix for the full list of survey questions.)
The primary criterion for participation was teaching of college-­level
composition. To encourage representation from a diverse population across
the field, I distributed the survey via the Writing Program Administrators
listserv, and the official listservs of the Two-­Year College English Associa-
tion and the Council of Writing Program Administrators People of Color
Caucus, I shared it with the chairs of the CCCC Asian American, Black,
Jewish, Latinx, and Native American Caucuses, and I posted the survey link
to social media. Though the sample was limited to those who saw the call,
self-­identified as eligible to participate, and responded, the call was also
reposted by others on social media (often referred to as snowball sampling),
which enabled me to reach members of the field I might not have had access
to through a more targeted or convenience-­based sample. In sum, I collected
195 responses to the survey.
Because the survey relied on respondents’ self-­reported data and because
the survey included multiple choice responses to some questions, I initially
examined responses by percentages, noting where respondents were located
and in what contexts they claimed to use the trigger warning. Bearing in
mind Inoue’s (2012) rejoinder to “be cautious when cutting data by race”
only after having “already analyzed it for other criteria” (p. 136), I also cross-­
tabulated data in two directions: once, cutting by race, and another time
examining the breakdown by racial formations among each category of
response data I had already examined. I then analyzed this data as well as
the NCAC data through an activity systems framework to identify the sub-
jects, motives, communities, labor, rules, and artifacts surrounding respon-
dents’ self-­identified usage of the trigger warning, with a particular eye
toward points of intersection with the system of Whiteness. There are

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limitations to this survey, which I discuss later in this essay, including a

sample that was, like other survey samples in our field, “relatively small
and self-­selected in nature” (Anderson et al., 2006, p. 68), but I am confi-
dent that it provides the snapshot I sought on where and when composition
instructors employed trigger warnings.
The NCAC defined trigger warnings as “written warnings to alert stu-
dents in advance that material assigned in a course might be upsetting or
offensive” (p. 3). In keeping with research that has found that print is not
the sole medium for the distribution of the trigger warning (Boysen et al.,
2016, p. 337), for the purposes of my original study, the TW was defined as
any verbal statement (written or oral) that informs students of course mate-
rial that may be potentially distressing or re-­traumatizing.
The NCAC reports among its major findings that more than half of
respondents had used what they would consider a trigger warning volun-
tarily, with nearly a quarter (23%) admitting to doing so “several times” or
“regularly” (p. 3). In my own study, close to 80% of survey respondents
reported that they have used what they consider a TW, including content
notes on course syllabi and warnings before individual class sessions or
readings.
Initially, it seemed there were few discernable patterns in survey data:
As reported by survey participants, the TW is used in private and public
schools, two-­year and four-­year colleges, research universities and small lib-
eral arts colleges, and in undergraduate and graduate classrooms across the
country in rural, suburban, and urban areas. Data did show, however, that
the TW is more commonly used in predominantly White institutions (88%)
than in other institution types (81%). Additionally, although 80% of respon-
dents identified as White, more than 90% of those who claimed they use
the TW on a regular basis identified as White. (The NCAC did not report
institutional or demographic data from participants.)
When I cut the data for race first, I initially found few differences in
trigger warning usage across self-­identified racial and ethnic formations: 11%
of respondents who self-­identified as Black, African American, Latinx, His-
panic, or Asian-­American reported using the trigger warning on a regular
basis, compared to 12% of respondents who self-­identified as White or Cau-
casian. I did find, however, that a greater percentage of participants who
self-­identified as Black, African American, Latinx, Hispanic, or Asian
American said they felt pressured to use the trigger warning (36%), whether
or not they actually used it, than the percentage of all respondents who said

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the same (23%). The pressure to use trigger warnings was even greater for
non-­W hite participants at predominantly White institutions (50%). This
suggests that that the trigger warning is part of a larger academic system
that confers greater pressures to perform and conform on teachers and schol-
ars of marginalized racial formations (Martinez, 2009).
Approximately half of respondents speculated that they would use a
trigger warning for a variety of subjects, including child abuse, war violence,
and suicide/self-­harm, as well as sexual violence and eating disorders, two
subjects before which the trigger warning initially appeared in feminist
online forums and blogs (Grey, 2017; Lothian, 2016; Washick, 2017). How-
ever, when asked about material for which they had actually used the trig-
ger warning in their own classrooms, other than sexual violence, the topics
most commonly prefaced with a trigger warning in the composition class-
room were racial violence and racial slurs. A little more than one-­third (35%)
of respondents reported having used a trigger warning preceding a discus-
sion or depiction of racial violence, with a similar percentage (36%) report-
ing that they had used the TW for a discussion or depiction of racial slurs.
These findings hint at a racialized dynamic of the TW thus far not fully
addressed in scholarship.
Broadly, rhetorical studies on specific texts, genres, and genre systems
as activity systems (Berkenkotter, 2001; Johnston, 2020; Russell, 1997; Win-
sor, 1999) “highlight how texts both reflect and shape social life” (John-
ston, 2020, p. 11). What, then, does the trigger warning tell us about the
situations and spaces in which it is used? In the following sections, I explore
the rhetorical functions and potential outcomes of the trigger warning as
an activity system in the postsecondary classroom. The examples provided
in these sections are illustrative rather than exhaustive and are chosen to
demonstrate the trigger warning’s operationalization as part of a White his-
torical activity system.

Centering the White Traumatized Body

One composition instructor who responded to the survey explained that
they did not use trigger warnings in their classroom, but they “might if the
material was especially difficult.” This response echoes statements made by
teachers, scholars, and journalists who have written about the trigger warn-
ing, such as Kate Manne’s (2015) claim that “common sense should tell us
that material that is merely offensive to certain people’s political or religious

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sensibilities shouldn’t merit a warning” (n.p.). Manne’s assertion of “com-

mon sense” as a sort of yardstick assumes some sort of universal logic with-
out defining its parameters; in a White-­dominant society, the logics of
Whiteness—­W hite ways of knowing and doing—­while largely “unmarked
and unnamed,” compose the “place from which White people look at our-
selves, at others, and at society” (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 1). As Tammie M.
Kennedy, Joyce Irene Middleton, and Krista Ratcliffe (2005) asked, “who
gets to define the terms” (p. 370)?
In the case of the trauma-­based stress disorders that trigger warnings
are, theoretically, intended to address, the terms are literally and rhetori-
cally defined by the American Psychiatric Association in the pages of the
DSM-­5. The traumatic triggers identified in the DSM-­5 are recognizable
experiences of trauma, those used as “exemplars” because of their visibility
and prevalence in existing discourse around trauma, such as the violence
witnessed or experienced by military personnel (Alvarez et al., 2016, p. 28).
Experiences that do not fit the dominant discourse are unrecognizable
and therefore often go unacknowledged and unaddressed (p. 29). Though
members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. are more
likely than White people to experience trauma even as defined by the DSM-­5
(Sibrava et al., 2019), because “the current definitions of trauma, trau-
matic stress, and trauma treatment are embedded in European perspectives”
(Comas-­Diaz et al., 2019, p. 2), the traumatic experiences of people of color
remain overlooked, undertreated, and unaccounted for in documents like
the DSM-­5 and by the APA, “the manual’s producers and the governing
body in U.S. mental healthcare” (Johnston, 2020, p. 3). Further, collective
traumas such as overt and covert racism do not align with current defini-
tions of trauma and traumatic stress that emphasize the experience and
psyche of the individual.
The DSM-­5 guidelines for a diagnosis of PTSD also require long-­term
presence of symptoms such as avoidance, hyperarousal, and withdrawal that
interfere with daily life and which cannot be caused by another medical con-
dition (APA, 2013, p. 272). This suggests that trauma is ordinary, whereas
long-­term trauma-­based stress is maladaptive: “the classification of PTSD
in the DSM-­5 normalizes survivors who ‘bounce back’” and “pathologizes
survivors who suffer intensely for prolonged periods of time” (Johnston,
2020, p. 3). This aligns with some of the earliest literature on what would
later be identified as trauma-­based stress: In the 1860s, the physical and
emotional stress among combat veterans during and after the Civil War was

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attributed to “battle fatigue” or “moral weakness,” the latter term in par-

ticular implying “personal deficits on the part of the individual experienc-
ing the distress” (Thomas et al., 2019, p. 424).
These individualistic mental health guidelines might explain the prev-
alence of trauma-­informed systems of care that emphasize resiliency
(Thomas et al., 2019), especially in schools that serve minoritized popula-
tions. This is perhaps ironic given that students of color, who are “already
ahead developmentally of Whites when it pertains to race understanding”
(Leonardo & Manning, 2015, p. 10), have already developed “racial tools
that allow them to survive” (p.  12). As Bettina Love (2019) explained:
“African-­A mericans are resilient and gritty because we have to be to
survive . . . ​
But grit alone will not overthrow oppressive systems of
power” (n.p.). Teaching survival tools to students who already possess
them is not only ineffective; it is also arguably racist. After all, it’s generally
White students, not students of color, who lack grit when it comes to race
talk (DiAngelo, 2011; Sue, 2015).
When we also consider that those most likely to experience secondary
or vicarious traumatization, such as in the classroom, are those who have
limited experience with trauma (Zurbriggen, 2011), it becomes clear that
the trigger warning is not designed with the marginalized student in mind.
As such, if trigger warnings are indeed intended to prevent (re)traumatiza-
tion in the classroom, they are rhetorically, if not explicitly, intended to pre-
vent White students’ (re)traumatization. Trigger warnings are thought to
prevent cognitive dissonance (Martin & Frisby, 2017), a necessary part of
White racial literacy (Grayson, 2020; see also Helms, 1990), and instead
cater to White fragility (DiAngelo, 2011) by rhetorically, if not explicitly,
encouraging White students to avoid rather than engage with material that
challenges their worldview.
Academic classrooms remain, ideologically and discursively, White
spaces. Given that “the ideology of Whiteness mediates individual and
collective development” inside and outside of the classroom (Leonardo &
Manning, 2015, p. 2), and given that the DSM-­5 contributes to a Eurocen-
tric understanding of trauma-­based stress, instructors’ determinations of
what might retraumatize the students in their classroom are likely to be lim-
ited to the guidelines that systems of Whiteness provide. After all, the
worldview that Whiteness encourages is “predicated on a certain misunder-
standing of the world as it is” (Leonardo & Manning, 2015, p. 10). Like
any other trauma-­informed pedagogy rooted in European individualistic

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ideology, the trigger warning may not only be insufficient to address the
lived experiences of students in a racially and ethnically diverse contempo-
rary classroom; it can also do more harm than good by “shaming, silenc-
ing, and retraumatizing victims/survivors who are told that their needs are
met when in fact they are not” (Becker-­Blease, 2017, p. 135). This may con-
tribute to the ongoing racial trauma students of color experience in the
classroom.

Typifying the Genre of the Trigger Warning

In attempting to determine the rules for the activity system of which the
trigger warning is a part, one encounters more questions than answers. Some
of these questions were posed by one of the composition instructors who
responded to the survey: “What constitutes a trigger warning? What are
the consequences of them? Can students leave the room? Opt out of
discussion?”
Thus far, it appears that the rules governing activity following the utter-
ance or distribution of an oral or print trigger warning remain unclear.
This is unsurprising, in light of studies reporting that many instructors are
uncertain what even constitutes a TW (Boysen et al., 2016; Grayson &
Wolfsdorf, 2020; NCAC, 2014), a pattern I also observed among composi-
tion instructors. Some instructors consider the content note a sort of “one-­
time trigger warning” (Grayson & Wolfsdorf, 2020), while others distinguish
between such content notes and those that “flag specific themes or passages”
(NCAC, 2015, p. 12). It seems that, despite the widespread usage of the trig-
ger warning, it remains a rather ill-­defined and unrecognizable genre.
Recognizable genres are as useful for audiences as they are for rhetors:
when an audience recognizes a genre with which they are familiar, they
respond accordingly because they have a sense, based upon experience with
that genre, of what is expected of them. Consider the following example
and explanation from Charles Bazerman (2003):

In creating typified forms or genres, we also come to typify the sit-

uations we find ourselves in. If we recognize that when a guest in
someone else’s house comments about bodily discomfort, the host
typically understands that as an obligation to make the guest feel
comfortable, then we can adjust our comments so as not to say
things that would mistakenly put our host in a state of obligation.

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The typification gives a certain shape and meaning to the circum-

stances and directs the kinds of actions that will ensue (p. 316).

This example demonstrates the interdependence of the speaker and the

audience in typifying the genre and situation. If either speaker or audience
deviate from those expectations, however, the other must adjust. This in
itself is not a problem—­genres do, of course, evolve over time—­but the
power differential between the speaker and the audience in the traditional
classroom complicates this particular situation. The audience (students) may
be unclear what is expected of them once the speaker (the instructor) intro-
duces the trigger warning, perhaps the result of the widespread usage of
the trigger warning without sufficient clarity of its conventions (Grayson &
Wolfsdorf, 2020; NCAC, 2015) or evidence of its efficacy (Bellet et  al.,
2018; Boysen, 2017; Khazan, 2019; Sanson et al., 2019). In the absence of
an expected response from the audience encountering the trigger warning
(students) once it has been shared, students are likely to default to the con-
ventions and norms of classroom interaction with which they are already
familiar, conventions that do not include trigger warnings and which are
also grounded in White, western ways of knowing and doing (hooks, 1994;
Sue, 2015).
Though some have claimed that the trigger warning makes the class-
room more accessible for all rather than requiring individuals to out them-
selves as trauma survivors (McFarland, 2017), previous studies of the trigger
warning in teacher education classrooms have found that, as implemented,
the trigger warning may actually “dissuade students from sharing negative
emotions,” particularly in an ethnically and racially diverse classroom,
wherein some students’ “culturally situated communication styles do not
encourage or include direct displays of emotion or dissent” (Grayson, 2020,
p. 80). Instructors who include stipulations for how students should request
alternative assignments or excused absences may inadvertently put the onus
on students to out themselves as trauma survivors. In this way, though
“framed as equal access tools, trigger warnings lend themselves to an indi-
vidualized model of harm and accommodation” (Washick, 2017, p. 101).
The previously quoted example from Bazerman (2003) also offers an
illustrative parallel to the classroom: Due to their outsider position in someone
else’s home, the guest in question may stifle their own discomfort to avoid
forcing upon the host a sense of obligation. As a result, the guest remains
uncomfortable while the host retains control over their space without any

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potentially negative feelings. In the classroom, even if the teacher utters a

trigger warning, if the student understands the classroom as a teacher-­
centered space (McFarland, 2017), they may choose to tolerate their dis-
comfort because they also don’t feel comfortable approaching the teacher to
request an alternative reading or assignment. This is not simply a matter of
choice, however; the historically and culturally situated dynamics of the
classroom make it very difficult for the teacher and student to stand on level
ground. The students likeliest to feel agency in the classroom are those who
already feel comfortable with self-­expression in such spaces and are famil-
iar with the discourse of the classroom, a discourse most readily available
to White middle-­c lass students (Inoue, 2016; Paris, 2012; Williams &
Magras, 2019).
Even more problematic may be whose voices are likeliest to be heard
and for whose benefit they are expressed. Consider, for example, Orem and
Simpkins’ (2015) conceptualization of the trigger warning as “weepy rhet-
oric”: In Orem and Simpkins’ view, the trigger warning weeps by “calling
attention to pain through language” (n.p.). This implies, however, that such
pain would not be recognized without the trigger warning; once again, the
onus is placed on the person who is harmed to point out the impacts of that
harm. It is not unreasonable to doubt that, in the classroom, a space that
has long perpetuated rhetorical, symbolic, and even physical violence toward
students of color, the student of color who expresses pain through language
will be heard and acknowledged in the same way that a White student
might.
It is in this way that, as Becker-­Blease (2017) has warned, “even the
most progressive, well-­considered trauma-­informed models risk becoming
cover for the status quo” (p. 134). The trigger warning, then, may reinforce
rather than resist the conventions of the classroom that long have silenced
marginalized groups, including trauma survivors.

Reinforcing Status Quo White Supremacy

In 2014, the Oberlin College resource guide for educators, one of the doc-
uments that arguably ignited the national debate on trigger warnings, was
proposed then quickly tabled. Among the topics the guide listed as worthy
of the trigger warning were “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissex-
ism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression” (as cited in
Warshick, 2017, p. 97). Composition instructors identified similar topics,

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with one survey respondent noting that they used the trigger warning for
any topic “that involves social/cultural ‘tension.’”
Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the course spaces in which students
are likeliest to encounter trigger warnings are those that explicitly address
privilege and oppression, such as women’s studies (Lothian, 2016; McFar-
land, 2017). Of course, the positioning of these courses as outside of the
traditional curriculum perpetuates the gender and racial hierarchies that
created and are upheld by academic structures. Likewise, the trigger warn-
ing serves to differentiate material that is traumatizing from material that
is not, thereby establishing a “hierarchy of trauma” in which raced and gen-
dered experiences outside of those “often canonized in the American or
European classroom are set apart as different, as particularly traumatizing”
(Filipovic, 2014, n.p., emphasis in original).
Incidences of racism, however, are not aberrations but in fact the norm
in a racialized and inherently racist society (Guinier, 2004; Mills, 1997;
Twine, 2010). If the systems and structures of a racist society perpetuate
racism and White supremacy (which they do), and if racism and White
supremacy are the root causes of racial trauma (which they are), then the
educational systems and institutions within that society contribute to ongo-
ing racial trauma. This means that the everyday, ordinary experiences of
schooling are traumatizing for people of color in the United States. Yet, as
Tressie McMillan Cottom (2014) has noted, “no one is arguing for trigger
warnings in the routine spaces where symbolic and structural violence are
acted on students at the margins . . . ​Instead, trigger warnings are being
encouraged for sites of resistance, not mechanisms of oppression” (n.p.).
If the experiences of marginalized groups are traumatizing, they have
always been traumatizing. Yet, according to my research, the trigger warn-
ing is most common in predominantly White institutions. For whom, then,
does the trigger warning really function?
Intriguingly, while popular media has frequently framed the trigger
warning as catering to the liberal student population (Lukianoff & Haidt,
2015), many respondents to the NCAC survey reported “offering warnings
for the sake of conservative or religious students” (NCAC, 2015, p.  5).
Respondents also reported that students requested warnings not solely
for trauma-­related material but for material that was “discomfiting, chal-
lenging, or offensive to their beliefs” (p. 6). Trauma, even from a Eurocen-
tric psychiatric standpoint, does not denote “any and all events that people

430
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feel are sensitive or distressing” (Boysen, 2017, p.167), yet the use of the
trigger warning as a pedagogical tool may be motivated by instructors
looking to prevent students’ discomfort or resistance.
Relatedly, nearly three-­quarters (72%) of survey respondents agreed
with the statement that triggers warnings are an act of kindness, while
approximately one-­third (32%) agreed that they are a necessity. If the trig-
ger warning really is about mitigating trauma, ideally it would be seen by
members of the community as more than an option or individual act of
kindness. This hints at the possibility, then, that instructors’ motives for
using the trigger warning are more complex. To unpack some of this com-
plexity, let’s return to the comment made by that composition instructor
who reported using trigger warnings for material involving “social/cultural
‘tension.’” The scare quotes and euphemistic word choice here are discur-
sive hedges that demonstrate a hesitance to discuss race directly (Bonilla-­
Silva, 2018; Bonilla-­Silva & Forman, 2000). “Tension,” after all, is vague
and arguably evasive as a referent to racism, sexism, or oppression, despite
its frequent usage in the media and political discourse (Allsop, 2019).
This discursive hesitance parallels the pedagogical hedging (Grayson,
2020) of the trigger warning itself. Classroom discussions and material that
challenge the social and political structures of White supremacy put instruc-
tors at risk (Coleman et al., 2016); the trigger warning may shield instruc-
tors by allowing them to “introduce potentially controversial material . . . ​
while at the same time defending their decision to do so” (Grayson, 2020,
p. xx). As one respondent to the NCAC survey plainly stated: “Trigger
warnings cover my ass” (NCAC, 2015, p. 7). As a social intention, or a means
for “using tools to accomplish collective activity” (Russell, 2009, p. 45), the
trigger warning, then, is part of a genre of apologia that, “under the guise
of student responsiveness, serves to simultaneously limit critical discourse
and reify existing racial formations” and status quo White supremacy (Gray-
son, 2020, p. xx).
Responses to both the NCAC survey and my original survey demon-
strate that the trigger warning is part of an activity system in which the
motives of participants are shaped not only by the interests of the surround-
ing communities that, intentionally or incidentally, pressure educators to
use the trigger warning, but also by “interconnected activity systems,” as
well as their own “subjectivity, experiencing, personal sense, emotion,
embodiment, identity, and moral commitment[s]” (Engeström, 2009,

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p. 308). Because “the racialized social system powerfully constitutes” indi-

viduals’ subjectivity in the United States (Leonardo & Manning, 2015, p. 8),
however, it is not possible to conceptualize the trigger warning as function-
ing outside of that system or even antidotally to it. To point, consider Orem
and Simpkins’s (2015) suggestion that the trigger warning allows margin-
alized peoples to talk “back to power in the same terms that have histori-
cally been used to oppress them” (n.p.). This suggestion echoes the
promise—­and the lie—­of acculturation. And, as Audre Lorde (2007) has
reminded us, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will
never enable us to bring about genuine change” (p. 111).

Reflections, Limitations, and New Directions

There are, admittedly, limitations to this research, which I include here in
hopes that they will be considered and rectified by researchers in the rhet-
oric of health of medicine who might wish to expand upon this work. The
survey sample was small and participants were predominantly White.
Approximately 80% of participants identified as White or Caucasian;
approximately 10% of participants identified as Black, African American,
Latino/a/x, Hispanic, Asian American, Indigenous, or of mixed race; and
approximately 10% declined to provide a racial self-­identification. I had
invited participants to self-­identify racially rather than select from a prede-
termined set of racial formations, but no such identification was required.
It is possible that, as Inoue (2012) has noted of collecting racial data, some
participants viewed “gathering this data as a racist project itself ” (p. 136).
In future projects, I would recommend researchers instead follow Inoue’s
suggestion to collect racial data but also explain why that data is being gath-
ered in the first place.
I was also surprised by the limited responses from non-­W hite partici-
pants, given my targeted outreach to Black, Indigenous, and other Peoples
of Color. Given that, according to some Black authors, the push for trigger
warnings is “being led by educated White people who are claiming to pro-
tect us all” (Owens, 2018, n.p.; see also Bidgel, 2018), it is possible that fewer
Black participants, for example, responded to the survey because they did
not believe the topic to be of relevance to them. This remains speculative,
however, and further research is needed to explore this dynamic.

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Finally, the critical and methodological frameworks I have employed

might be reconsidered or expanded upon in future research. From one per-
spective, the use of activity theory as a central framework can be interpreted
as a reliance upon western frameworks that might overlook key racialized
aspects of the trigger warning’s functions as pedagogy. There is truth to this,
and I recommend that researchers interested in similar projects expand their
toolboxes to consider conceptual and methodological frameworks rooted
in other societies’ and cultures’ approaches to meaning-­making. That said,
I believe this research demonstrates that, even when analyzed though pre-
dominantly western frameworks, the trigger warning emerges as a peda-
gogical practice that maintains White cultural hegemony in higher
education.

Toward a New System of

Trauma-­Informed Pedagogy
Bazerman (2003) explained that understanding how genres “work in the
systems and circumstances they were designed for” can help writers fulfill
the expectations of an audience and situation (p. 311). Because genres are
social acts as much as texts, genres help individuals fulfill the behavioral as
well as discursive expectations of a situation. The trigger warning, however,
wasn’t created for the situation of the classroom. Relatedly, much of the trig-
ger warning debate has been “driven largely by politically motivated writ-
ers outside of the academy” (Hanlon, 2015, p. 53) and “it has often been the
idea of the trigger warning, more the practice of warning itself, on which
the conversation centers” (Lothian, 2016, p. 744). These points are instruc-
tive as we think about trauma-­informed pedagogy more broadly.
The trigger warning, if it worked, would fall into the trap of trauma-­
informed practices that may “leave individuals well adjusted but inactive in
the face of oppression and trauma of all kinds while the individuals and
systems that give rise to trauma and oppression operate as usual” (Becker-­
Blease, 2017, p. 134). However, recent psychological research demonstrates
that the trigger warning is not effective at preventing trauma responses
(Sanson et al., 2019) and may actually worsen students’ anxiety (Bellet et al.,
2018). “What is particularly interesting about genres as systems of typified
written communication is their mobility and ability to cross organizational
boundaries” (Engeström, 2009, p. 309). Given the ineffectiveness of the

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trigger warning as interventional educational praxis, the extent to which

the trigger warning does this, at least successfully, is unclear.
I argue, then, that the trigger warning isn’t a trauma-­informed prac-
tice at all, but merely “a low-­stakes way” for instructors to “to identify as
conscious of social justice issues” (Filipovic, 2014) without actually doing
the active, antiracist work required to challenge the systems of White
supremacy. As Leonardo and Manning (2015) have noted, “with respect to
race pedagogy, teachers seem to settle for mediocrity, which is less a com-
mentary on their intentions but more about the racialized activity system
driven by the White collective unconscious” (p. 10). The trigger warning
wasn’t created for the system of the classroom, yet it appears to have been
created or perhaps coopted for the larger system of White supremacy of
which the classroom is a part. As we become more interested in what
trauma-­informed pedagogy can offer for our students, particularly our most
marginalized students, it is imperative that we do so in ways that are more
than performative and that do not serve, even indirectly, ends that are oppo-
site of those we claim to seek.
Such reductive pedagogical practices developed within the confines of
a White, western notion of trauma may subsequently perpetuate students’
marginalization. Just as the DSM-­5 identifies the individual as the “primary
subject of analysis” in defining, diagnosing, and treating trauma (Johnston,
2020, p. 3), much so-­called trauma-­informed practices emphasize “respond-
ing more appropriately to individual pathology,” despite research suggest-
ing greater benefits of approaches that connect individual experience to
“social systems that give rise to trauma and oppression” (Becker-­Blease,
2017, p. 133). In doing so, such trauma-­informed pedagogies keep the struc-
tures that perpetuate trauma, such as the very educational institutions in
which they are practiced, firmly in place.
If an examination of the trigger warning clarifies that it is not in fact a
trauma-­informed practice, it also raises additional questions about trauma-­
informed pedagogy: How do we move beyond the vague textual genre of
the trigger warning toward a more antiracist conceptualization of trauma-­
informed pedagogy? What ends do we seek when employing trauma-­
informed pedagogies in our classrooms? What trauma-­informed tools
must we design to create “historically new forms of activity” (Engeström,
1987, p.  12) for working with students who have experienced trauma in
classrooms that are part of an inherently White system? How can these
new trauma-­informed pedagogies help teachers and students alike unlearn

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the “mediating tools of Whiteness” that “have become the common sense
embedded in everyday practice” (Leonardo & Manning, 2015, p. 7)?
These questions are of particular importance for the fields of rheto-
ric and composition and communication studies generally and rhetoric of
health and medicine in particular. Of course, they are not easy questions to
answer and any attempt to answer these questions at this juncture in this
essay would be brief and speculative. Instead, I suggest that, to more com-
prehensively consider what trauma-­informed pedagogies might mean for
rhetoric and composition classrooms, we—­scholars, teachers, and program
administrators—­begin by doing what we ask our students to do: “read texts
critically and . . . ​listen rhetorically to all the discourses that permeate [our]
lives—­a ll the discourses that, in the U.S., exist in the presence of White-
ness” (Kennedy et al., 2005, p. 370).
When we listen to the discourse surrounding trauma-­informed peda-
gogies, we are likely to discover that, in an educational system wherein all
aspects of activity are mediated by Whiteness (Leonardo, 2012; Leonardo &
Manning, 2015), trauma-­based practices, like the definition of trauma
itself, are inextricably linked to dominant ideologies and systems of power
that maintain White supremacy. Any trauma-­informed pedagogy that is
merely additive, rather than integrative, risks amounting to harm reduction,
at best, and will do little to change the systems that maintain inequity. It
has been argued that conversations about trigger warnings, and the poli-
cies and pedagogies that stem from these conversations, are actually “world-­
making practices” (Lothian, 2016) and I am inclined to agree that we
ought to “let go of questions around the legitimacy of triggers and traumas”
and redirect attention from individual experience to “the physical and dis-
cursive spaces” wherein trigger warnings are requested or used (p.  744).
Radical transformation requires “new theoretical concepts” that can
expand “horizons of possibilities” (Engeström, 2009, p. 312). To apply this
in terms of trauma-­informed pedagogy may demand new ways of concep-
tualizing and interpreting both trauma and the activity system of the
classroom.
Finally, then, I suggest that we answer another, broader question, one
that requires considerable reflexivity and critical reflection: What world(s)
do we want to create?

Mara Lee Grayson is author of Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Prac-

tices for Critical Writing and Race Talk in the Age of the Trigger Warning:

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 The Trigger Warning and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

Recognizing and Challenging Classroom Cultures of Silence, as well as numer-

ous articles and book chapters. She is an assistant professor at California
State University, Dominguez Hills.

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Appendix: Survey Questions

Institutional Information
This information will help the researcher get a better sense of the types of institu-
tions and programs in which trigger warnings are used.

1) W hich of the following describes the primary institution in which

you teach? Please check all that apply.
a. Two-­year college
b. Four-­year college
c. MA-­granting institution
d. Doctorate-­granting institution
e. Public institution
f. Private institution
g. Research university
h. Small Liberal Arts College
i. Predominantly White Institution
j. Historically Black College or University
k. Hispanic-­Serving Institution

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2) W hich of the following best describes the U.S. region in which your
institution is located?
a. New England
b. Mid-­Atlantic
c. Southeast
d. Midwest
e. South
f. Pacific Northwest
g. Southwest

3) Which of the following best describes the specific area in which your
campus is located?
a. Large metropolitan area
b. Smaller urban area
c. College town
d. Suburban
e. Rural

4) Please identify your role(s) and/or responsibilities in your institution.

Check all that apply.
a. Teaching undergraduate students
b. Teaching MA-­level graduate students
c. Teaching doctoral students
d. Writing program administration
e. Teaching First Year Composition

Pedagogical Information
1) To your knowledge, are trigger warnings used on your campus?
a. Yes
b. No

2) Do you feel pressured to use trigger warnings (whether or not you
use them)?
a. No, not at all
b. Yes, somewhat
c. Yes, a great deal

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3) If you answered “Yes” to Question #3, from what or whom do you
feel that pressure? Please check all that apply. (If you answered “No,”
please skip this question.)
a. From students
b. From colleagues
c. From administrators
d. From the university community

4) Please check all statements with which you agree.

a. Trigger warnings are anti-­intellectual
b. Trigger warnings are coddling
c. Trigger warnings are a necessity
d. Trigger warnings are an act of kindness
e. Trigger warnings threaten academic freedom
f. Trigger warnings are neither useful nor harmful
g. Trigger warnings are useful but unnecessary
h. Trigger warnings are harmful
i. Discussion of trigger warnings is important on college
campuses
j. Discussion of trigger warnings is distracting on college
campuses

5) Do you use trigger warnings in your classroom(s)?

a. Yes, regularly
b. Yes, sometimes
c. Yes, rarely
d. No, never

6) If you answered “Yes” to Question #1, when do you use or when have
you used trigger warnings? Please check all that apply. (If you
answered “No,” please skip this question.)
a. I include a broad trigger warning on my syllabus.
b. I use a trigger warning for individual class sessions.
c. I use a trigger warning for individual course texts.
d. I use a trigger warning for individual class discussions.

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 The Trigger Warning and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

7 ) For which of the following types of content have you used or would
you use trigger warnings? Please check all that apply.

Type of Content I have used a TW for this I would use a TW for this

War-­related violence, depiction

War-­related violence, discussion

Genocide, discussion

Genocide, depiction

Racial violence, depiction

Racial violence, discussion

Hate crime, depiction

Hate crime, discussion

Domestic violence, depiction

Domestic violence, discussion

Violence (other), depiction

Violence (other), discussion

Child abuse, depiction

Child abuse, discussion

Consensual sex (heterosexual),

depiction

Consensual sex (heterosexual),

discussion

Consensual sex (homosexual),

depiction

Consensual sex (homosexual),

discussion

Rape / sexual assault, depiction

Rape / sexual assault, discussion

Sexual harassment, depiction

Sexual harassment, discussion

Suicide / self-­harm, depiction

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Type of Content I have used a TW for this I would use a TW for this

Suicide / self-­harm, discussion

Death (natural), depiction

Death (natural), discussion

Physical illness, depiction

Physical illness, discussion

Mental illness, depiction

Mental illness, discussion

Racial slurs, depiction

Racial slurs, discussion

Profanity (non-­racial), depiction

Profanity (non-­racial), discussion

Other (please identify below)

Voluntary Demographic Information

This information will help the researcher get a better sense of who uses trigger
warning, for what purposes, and in what contexts.

Please provide gender self-­identification. ________________

Please provide racial and/or ethnic self-­identification(s). ___________

Voluntary: Interest in Being Contacted for

a Future Interview

If contacted, you may decline to be interviewed at any time.

Would you be willing to share more of your thoughts on or experiences

with trigger warnings? If so, please provide your name and the best email
address at which to contact you in the space below.

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