Sonic Dread

Informed by research on teaching difficult knowledge and sonic studies in education, this paper critically examines the affective implications of a common pedagogical strategy used to teach difficult knowledge: film. Studies of the use of film in the classroom tend to prioritize analysis that examines how students encounter difficult knowledge ocularly. However, there is little research regarding how teachers and learners process the sounds of trauma in film—specifically the sound of a gunshot. Given that American schools are places haunted by the ever-present specter of school shootings, educators must recognize that the eyes are not the only parts of our bodies that take in violence, and seeing is not the only sense that absorbs the always flowing and constantly circulating forces in the spaces we inhabit. Similar to seeing trauma, hearing it can be intensely destabilizing.