Keyword 8: Trigger Warnings

This piece analyzes the history and discussions of “trigger warnings” (or “content warnings”) in the college classroom in light of the originating history and discussions of such warnings in media fan cultures—particularly in women’s and queer fan productions surrounding television programs. While linked, these deployments of trigger warnings occur in different contexts with different ramifications (for understandings of “content” and of “trauma”; for conventions or transformations of texts and publics; for compliance or resistance to neoliberal, corporate formations). By reading fan cultural operations with and against academic ones, the varying epistemological, pedagogical, textual, affective, and political implications of this entertainment/educational trend emerge most sharply.