What does it mean to teach writing when war enters the classroom not as a distant topic, but as a lived and ongoing reality that shapes students’ attention, sense of safety, participation, and learning? This session examines Zoom-based writing classes at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) during a period in which war is not a remote subject of discussion, but an immediate force shaping students’ affective, cognitive, and rhetorical engagement. Drawing on Georgetown’s Engelhard framework, with its emphasis on reflection, well-being, and cura personalis, we ask how writing instructors might sustain rigorous teaching and learning while also responding to fear, uncertainty, and disruption with care for the whole person.
In this work, we engage a pedagogical praxis grounded in bell hooks’ teaching community and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of hope, framing our approach as a practice of critical hope that refuses both denial and despair. Rather than treating crisis as external to learning, we consider how writing can become a disciplined practice of reflection, witness, and inquiry. Through pedagogical storytelling and classroom-based examples, we share practices we developed in GU-Q writing courses to inform our teaching-and-learning, including the use of poetry as an opening frame and pedagogical entry point, particularly war poetry through which students could engage lessons of history lived through war; reflective prompts; structured check-ins; and They Say / I Say-informed blog writing. These practices invite students to engage public discourses surrounding war, threat, and uncertainty while developing situated, reflective, and analytical responses that make room for both feeling and critical consciousness.
In this session, we will share pedagogical strategies that emerged both from our own experiences of these conditions and from exchanges with colleagues in meetings and shared conversations, including approaches to opening difficult conversations and to designing writing classrooms that sustain reflective inquiry, dialogic engagement, and rigorous academic learning in times of crisis.
We will share teacher and student generated prompts, students’ responses (with permission), and invite two students to co-present their experiences through recorded, or live via Zoom. Our goal is to show how writing courses can become spaces for thought, language, hope, and community in the midst of acute uncertainty.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Culture and Politics (English & Literature), Georgetown University
Dr. Ghada Alatrash is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University in Qatar. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of... Read More →
Associate Teaching ProfAssociate Professor of English Composition and Rhetoric at Georgetown University in Qatar., Georgetown University
Dr. Mysti Rudd is Associate Teaching Professor of English Composition and Rhetoric at Georgetown University in Qatar. Professor Rudd is a compositionist who studies the teaching and learning of writing. She coordinates the teaching of first-year writing courses and trains undergraduate... Read More →
Aljouri Al-Tamimi is a Qatari student at the Walsh School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She is currently a rising junior studying International Economics. She sees writing as a way to reflect on her experiences, express herself, and engage with the world around her.
Hala Assaf is a Palestinian first-year student at the Walsh School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She is planning to major in Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA.) She has always valued writing as a way to express herself, reflect on her experiences, and make sense... Read More →
Jarffah Amadou is a Liberian and a rising junior at Georgetown University in Qatar pursuing a degree in International Politics. His academic interests center on education in emergencies, NGOs, diplomacy, conflict, and social resilience, particularly within the Liberian context. Beyond... Read More →
Latifa Almulaifi is a rising junior at Georgetown University in Qatar, pursuing a degree in International Economics. Originally from Kuwait, her writing is influenced by her identity and the world around her, and she uses poetry as a way to make sense of it all.
Tuesday May 19, 2026 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT Film Screening RoomSecond Floor of Healey Family Student Center
