Editor’s Note: Echoing themes sounded by guest blogger Eoin Cannon, Ohio State University Graduate Instructor Sarah Carnahan reflects on the risks–and benefits– of self-disclosure when teaching about addiction and recovery.
This summer was my first foray into teaching an undergraduate course about women and addiction in our Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department. One of the challenges of teaching courses that lend themselves to a feminist framework is finding the balance between “the personal is political,” and the academic rigor that is required when learning what is, to most students, a new body of theory and a new mode of analysis. Compared to the other WGSST courses that I have taught, “Women and Addiction” brought new demands and opportunities in terms of self-disclosure as pedagogical, academic, and human practice.
One component of the Women and Addiction class is blogging.