Their World Cracked Open: Theorizing Shelter in 9/11 Curricula

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Following the tragic events of September 11, schools had to work with students on first draft history--teaching students about a political trauma as the details and repercussions of the event were still unfolding. Materials for teaching such a trauma have to grapple with the concept of shelter; that is, what students should be exposed to or shielded from that may be intellectually, morally, or emotionally upsetting to them. This dissertation is a curriculum study theorizing the mechanism of shelter in national programs used to teach students about September 11. Document analysis is used to interpret the curricula, and the secondary analysis is grounded in curriculum studies, exploring the mechanism of shelter across critical thinking, political value systems, and emotional responsibilities operationalized across the curricula. The study ends with a use of the theory of Julia Kristeva to interrogate the possibilities for using uncertainty for a different type of sheltered curriculum.

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