Rayelle Davis: On Trauma in Appalachia

Rayelle Davis discusses her book, Money in the Mountains: The Culture Trauma of Appalachia. By drawing upon her work as a trauma therapist in the region, Davis comes to argue that Appalachian trauma is colonial trauma. Tracing the predatory systems of power and the extraction of wealth and resources by a distant elite, Davis sees the challenges around identity, sovereignty, and the actual cost of inequality in America come down to colonial models of exploitation. Rayelle Davis is a trauma…

Paul Hirschfield on Fatal Police Violence

Paul Hirschfield talks about his journal article, "Exceptionally Lethal: American Police Killings in a Comparative Perspective." Police in the United States stand out in the developed world for their reliance on deadly force. Other nations in the Americas, however, feature higher or similar levels of fatal police violence. The differences seem rooted in elevated rates of gun violence and ethnoracial inequality and discord.