Judging when triggered: exploring the trauma of the judge as a captive audience member within intercollegiate forensic tournaments

Abstract

Abstract Intercollegiate forensics provides space for students to learn through performance, to challenge normative frameworks, and explore intersectionality. Increasingly, student performances include content and live-action portrayal of traumatic events. Judges become captive audience members who are unable to leave if they experience (re)trauma(tization) during a performance. Through iterative thematic analysis of exploratory data (n = 65) researchers found that participants connected being triggered within rounds to the concepts of automated reactions; feeling bound by forensic norms; triggering student performance characteristics; material lived experience compared to embodied performance; and meditated judge responses.