My Students’ Creative Work
“Grief and Resistance: Social Responses to American Gun Violence”
For their final project, the first-year students in my Boston College course were given the option to do a creative project that drew on the themes of the course in lieu of a final paper. Several students took up this challenge. Below is a sample of their work from Fall 2021
Podcasts
18 minute podcast
WE ARE THE CHILDREN
Jaida Charles
This podcast creates an immersive experience for listeners to hear firsthand stories from college students about their experiences of grief and identity.
A three-episode podcast series
TRIGGERING SOCIOLOGY
Beth Verghese & Kate Lewis
“Our podcast attempts to form a deeper understanding of neighborhood gun violence, mass shootings, and methods of resistance. We include ideas of grief in relation to gun violence, how gun violence shapes people's lives, and the resistance response to gun violence. We take a stance that gun violence negatively and disproportionately affects people’s lives, and discuss specifics of how this molds grief, upbringings, and government reactions through conversations and research.”
FIGHT THE FATHER, SAVE THE CHILDREN
Aiden O’Neill
A podcast created “to explain
the progression of firearm legislation while arguing that failing to acknowledge the epidemic only leads to more violence, as evidenced by the life of Marvin Gaye.'“
16 minute podcast
“My Dear Friend, I am So Grateful to Have Known a Soul as Beautiful as Yours”
Anaka Landrigan
MAterial arts
A series of three embroideries in memory of a lost friend: “one to represent my grief; one to represent the memories, love, and pain that I will always carry; and one to represent the peace that I am working towards achieving.”
POETRY
Gunned Down
Julia Burdsall
“The United States is sick with a fatal diagnosis; bullets tear through warm bodies only to make them cold soon thereafter, and the bloodshed induced by the nation’s proliferate armory reeks of selfishness—my free-verse poem is simply an attempt to acknowledge such truth while connecting this course’s main concepts and themes by way of artistic expression.”
ORGANIZATION PROPOSALS
Community Grief Gardens
Annie Scott
“In an effort to promote grief responses and to advance preventive resistance efforts, I am conceptualizing an organization that partners with the loved ones of gun violence victims to support them in creating green spaces within their communities. The envisioned program encourages community gardens as a place of memorial, providing a sacred space of remembrance and allowing for communal grieving. Moreover, these gardens will function in accordance with place based prevention principles, working to prevent future gun violence.”
SPEAK!
Yocheved Ligier
“The organization's goal is to give students the space to reflect on the issue of gun
violence and the way they are affected by it in their daily lives. Furthermore, SPEAK! program participants find ways on how they can combat the mental and emotional challenges
they encounter due to the effects that gun violence brings.”
film screening, Panel discussion, and Community conversations
At the conclusion of our semester, the short film “Our Philadelphia” was screened as a public event at Boston College. Visiting guests Jaylen Frisby and Christina Cho joined Dr. Robert Motley, Jr. on a panel discussion after the film. Following the panel, eight Grief and Resistance students led breakout room conversations on a range of topics that emerged from the themes of the film. Leading those discussions functioned as part of those students’ final projects for the course.
