Adrie Kusserow Poetry Reading and Discussion

Title: THE TRAUMA MANTRAS

UNSETTLING THE SELF/RETHINKING TRAUMA:  Ethnographic Prose Poems on South Sudanese Refugees and American Attempts to “Heal” Them

Auto-ethnography, intimate ethnography, and ethnographic memoir have become increasingly central modes of anthropological writing. Medical anthropologist, teacher and writer Adrie Kusserow will read from her recent ethnographic memoir in prose poems, giving explanation and background to each piece, as well as exploring how “unsettling the self” entails rethinking and questioning current American assumptions about self, suffering and trauma, as well as rethinking the way American culture privileges psychologized individualism and the supposed fragility of the self.