Project Description
As Eric King Watts has argued, the voiceless suffering of black bodies sustains racism. To feel, including feelings of suffering and pain, is part of being human. Silencing the stories of pain is part of dehumanization that simply marks death through the counting of bodies instead of honoring and respecting human loss. Narrative, on the other hand, can be not only empowering, but a resource for social change. Our project provides an innovative platform to share narratives of gun violence by those most impacted by that gun violence. These stories are the ones most frequently forgotten or obfuscated by dominant public narratives of gun violence—public stories that either count bodies, rather than humanize, or ignore the persistent reality and community trauma of gun violence. Creating a public platform for these stories can be both a cathartic component of individual and community healing, as well as a resource for scholarly inquiry into the experience of gun violence and community advocacy for gun violence prevention. The crux of this project is the collection and analysis of gun violence narratives, which are posted to an interactive website to share with various communities (https://uwm.edu/gunviolenceproject).
Tasks and Responsibilites
Research assistants have one primary task--transcription and processing of the gun violence narratives (i.e., the interviews). Their secondary task is assisting with coding the narratives (e.g., what type of gun violence was involved in a particular narrative) so those codes may be used for the searchable, interactive website map.