Literature Review as Bricolage: Critiquing and Extending Psychoanalytically Informed Pedagogical Approaches to Difficult History

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: History, Philosophy, and Curriculum (Table 3)

Abstract

This paper discusses how I worked through the intellectual and emotional difficulty of critiquing a seminal source when preparing a literature review for my proposed dissertation research study. I challenged my understanding of Deborah Britzman’s (1998) psychoanalytically informed concept of difficult knowledge, as evoked in the source in question. I took up an unconventional, lyrical, and artistic writing approach for this pursuit, an endeavor that ironically reflected the very topic I struggled to comprehend.

Author

• Leslie Smith Duss, The George Washington University
  Presenting Author