The Final Paper – Healing From Trauma

Complete the final paper. The process of writing the paper will take most of the semester. Completing the paper will involve identifying a specific focus within the broader topic, collecting evidence (at least five academic sources) that addresses the focus, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence, and developing and evaluating potential solutions to the identified problem that are based on the available evidence. The paper will be worth 50% of your grade in the class. The grading rubric is available and will be reviewed in class

The Paper
The broader topic: Healing from trauma.
Steps to take:
1. Focus on a specific trauma (Acute, Chronic, or Complex) or series of traumatic events that you can connect to the Critical Concerns of the Sisters of Mercy. Use one of the following three areas to think about what specific trauma and population you are concerned with.
Area 1: Trauma as an individual experience (i.e., victims of an illness, abuse, or a mental struggle such as PTSD, or, having been in some sort of major accident or through an incident or assault that has left a person traumatized)
Area 2: Trauma experienced by an event (i.e., January 6th insurgency, 9/11, a natural disaster, school shootings such as Uvalde, TX) that has affected both individuals directly involved but also the larger community.
Area 3: Trauma resulting from a series of events that impact larger communities and societies (AIDS epidemic, COVID pandemic, wars or famines or being refugees or other long lasting traumatic events)
2. Research the trauma topic and get a clear sense of the causes and effects of those impacted.
Example: Being a child refugee, coming to the US and fleeing a violent region of the world, and having to travel through very dangerous conditions. (what area listed above am I selecting from?)
3. Frame a research question that relates to the broader topic
Example: What sort of resources and support would help refugee children heal from the trauma they might bring after fleeing from violence in countries in Central America?
4. Consider a holistic approach to healing from the trauma – the solutions for healing need to reflect an interdisciplinary framework.
Example: Since I am an education major, I want to develop an after-school program designed to help refugee children, so I’ll focus on a range of approaches that make sense for this population – maybe something to help with language barriers, or to build on the curriculum, or to think of ways to connect to their home countries.
5. Develop your proposal and present it to the class on week 6.
Example: After further research, I am proposing to support a group of 15 recent refugees from Central America in my after school club by working with the school to offer foods from their culture, add arts and music they know to our gatherings, teach them breathing and meditation strategies when they are anxious, and connect their parents to local social services that could offer therapy or other resources.
6. Using feedback on the proposal, continue to research solutions, and develop your paper – first draft of completed paper due week 10.

Important: The final paper needs to include evidence from research that you do to find articles, scholarship, and studies related to the selected trauma and to the interdisciplinary healing approach you are proposing. The course textbook is one source, and it has chapters that might help you, but you will also need at least four other sources that you find doing research at the library.

The final paper in this course is worth 50 points and should exhibit all of your learning in the class, display a strong command of your research and proposal writing skills, include scholarly research, and meet the high expectations stated in the attached rubric. In this paper, you need to present a proposal for treatment to help a specific population who have been, or are currently, victims of a specific type of trauma. You will need to research the trauma itself, also research various approaches to therapy used to support victims of the same (or similar) traumas, and then think of an interdisciplinary approach to helping victims of this type of trauma that draws from 3 or 4 types of healing treatments. Do all of this work first! Then sit down to write your paper. See the attached rubric for further guidance and directions.

INTD 301.91 Spring 2022 Mercy Seminar Paper Outline
This paper is the focus of the course, so it’s very important to get it started in the right way. I suggest you use an outline so that you know how much time/space to devote to each section. Also, breaking the work into smaller pieces can help you feel less overwhelmed!
Your paper will probably turn out to be 11-16 pages, including the Works Cited page. You might be able to do what you need in 8-9 pages, but that is not likely. There’s no specific upper limit: I am happy to read what you have to say.
Here is a suggestion for how to plan your workflow.
1) Introduction (1 – 1 ½ pages): The introduction needs to do four main things:
· capture the attention of your reader;
· lay out your research question and inform your reader how your specific question relates to the broader problem;
· briefly explain why this problem, your research question and your work on it relates to the Critical Concern/s and briefly, how the relevant Critical Concern/s relate to Catholic Social Teaching;
· briefly outline the scope of your research and the field/s involved.
Basically you are providing a road map for your reader: “here is where we are headed in this paper”. Note: You may find it easier to write the introduction LAST. I know that is counterintuitive, but it is sometimes easier.
2) Analytic Literature Review (8 – 10 pages of 1 ½ – 2 pages each): In this section you are going to explore and analyze each of the five main sources that you have found. (See the Next Steps handout for more on “Analysis of each article”). One key task will be deciding which order to put the articles in, but we’ll get to that as time goes on; it will vary according to your topic. When first drafting, focus on building good analyses for each article and worry about ordering later.
3) Implications of your research for answering your research question: Building complexity: (2 pages): Here you are going to synthesize the various articles and explain whether they answer your research question, and if so, how. How do the findings fit together? Where do they intersect? Are there findings that conflict and make you think?
4) Broader Implications of your specific research findings and your thinking about positive steps towards addressing the problem. (1 –2 pages): Finally, you are going to wrap things up in a way that moves outward by suggesting an area for future research and making some application of your results to the broader problem. You are NOT going to repeat what you’ve already said – we just read that and don’t need to read it again!
What the reader does need to hear is three things:
· how what you learned by doing the research enriches your understanding of the problem;
· how what you learned matters for thinking about possible steps to address the problem:
· what specific strategies you suggest for taking the Mercy Critical Concern in a positive direction and why, based on your research. Here you can develop your thinking about the Critical
Concern/s a bit more, including a discussion of their possible strengths and limitations, or the strengths and limitations of the relevant documents in Catholic Social Teaching.
Your discussion in the conclusion should build on your work with your main sources in the previous part of the paper, but also go beyond it. When developing and supporting your work in this section, you are not limited to your initial five main sources. There may be some relevant information from journalistic sources. advocacy organizations, but you should always approach all sources with your critical thinking hat on: the same analytic questions for your Lit Review section are relevant here.
This is an interdisciplinary research paper. The conclusion involves your personal suggestions and arguments to support them. You are an author, not a disembodied voice, so sparing use of the “I” or the phrase “this author” can be acceptable in this section.
5) Works Cited (1-2 pages): You should use whatever documentation style your major requires.

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