The NAS invites you

Our friends at the National Association of Scholars write to alert us that this is the last day of NAS’s write-your-own-trigger-warnings contest. Readers of the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, the Daily Caller, and College Insurrection have been submitting entries. The NAS would love to have Power Line readers get in on the fun. You are cordially invited:

What do you wish you knew about a book before you were traumatized by it? How would you warn future readers of say, Pride and Prejudice, The House at Pooh Corner, and How to Win Friends and Influence People?

Don’t worry too much about giving away the ending. As Oberlin College wrote in its proposed guidelines for faculty members, “even if a trigger warning does contain a spoiler, experiencing a trigger is always, always worse than experiencing a spoiler.”

You can submit your trigger warnings on Twitter with the hashtag #triggerwarningfail and NAS’s handle @NASorg, or you can post them to NAS’s Facebook page or in the comments on this post.

Some examples:

Treasure Island. Warning: offensive portrayals of transnational nautical entrepreneurs. #triggerwarningfail @NASorg

Anna Karenina. Warning: revolt against patriarchy ends badly. #triggerwarningfail @NASorg

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Warning: insensitive portrayal of bipolar disorder. #triggerwarningfail @NASorg

Authors of the top three trigger warnings win a free copy of Peter Wood’s book A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now.

The NAS originally announced the contest here. NAS executive director Ashley Thorne has more on the contest here.

Canterbury Tales? King Lear? Wuthering Heights? The possibilities are virtually endless and the need is great.

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