Traumatized Children and Post-Traumatic Growth in Francophone Trauma Novels

In an attempt to decolonize Trauma Studies, a dominant mental health discourse, and to expand our understanding of trauma and post-traumatic growth, this project investigates J.M.G. Le Clézio’s The African (L’africain 2004) and Ahmadou Kourouma’s: Allah is Not Obliged 2011) (Allah n’est pas obligé 2000) and the untranslated and unfinished Quand on refuse on dit non (2004). The term “decolonizing Trauma Studies” refers to a remapping of this particular field of Cultural Theory by studying these non-Western “trauma novels”. The first critical suggestion advanced is that these authors explore the traumatic consequences of lies that are ontological and phenomenological in nature and maintained through language (logos). This research then examines Le Clézio’s and Kourouma’s models of healing, which centre on the body, language, and an empathetic re-encounter with the traumatized self through narratives. Another major finding is that these texts experiment with literature, manipulating it into new forms, thus expanding our understanding of the relationship between the literary arts and post-traumatic growth theories and treatments.

Decolonizing the U.S. Health Care System: Undocumented and Disabled after ACA

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) explicitly denies newly arrived documented and undocumented immigrants health insurance coverage, effectively making them the largest remaining uninsured segment of the U.S. population. Using mixed qualitative methods, our original research illustrates the health consequences experienced by uninsured, disabled undocumented immigrants as they navigate what they describe as an apartheid health care system. Critiquing the notion of immigrants as “public charges” or burdens on the system, our qualitative analysis focuses on Houston Health Action, a community-based organization led by and for undocumented, low-income disabled immigrants in Houston, Texas. Engaging a critical migration and critical disabilities studies framework, we use this valuable case to highlight contemporary contradictions in health care and immigration legislation and the embodied consequences of the intersecting oppressions of race, ability, immigration status, and health care access.

Committing Sociology: Being Healthy, Happy, and Up-High in St. James Town

There is a doggedly persistent, pervasive, and pernicious tendency to individualize ratherthan socialize problems. This is a discernable pattern that we see all around us,independent of any one particular social context. This collaboratively produced article isan example of and commitment to feminist praxis. We intentionally mobilize the “toolsof social science, friendship, and the power of conversation” (Mountz, 2016) to bring tolife ideas that Mehdia experienced for the first time in Laura’s undergraduate classroom.Specifically, she and fellow classmates, along with Maryam, learned how to cultivate andemploy their “sociological imagination” (Mills, 1959, 2000); connecting aspects ofbiography with materially arising social conditions. The aim of such inquiry is togenerate new insights and critically minded, contextually situated, and empiricallysupported explications for how things happen for and around us in the world we inhabit.In doing so, we are able to “sociologically reimagine” analysis by using visual modes ofinquiry and intentional “interdisciplinary entanglement” to blur the boundaries betweentraditional and so-called non-traditional modes of knowledge making (Jungnickel &Hjorth, 2014). We argue that the time is absolutely upon us to “commit sociology,”[1]and we offer this article as an intervention that does just this. [1] As per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yT9dhHsKwc