Julia Maeding

Julia Maeding is a fourth-year English major. Her thesis, Dog Rose, explores the intersection(s) of trauma and magic, particularly for traumas sustained during girlhood. The fiercely personal project spawned from its writer’s experience with EMDR, a therapeutic modality which allows PTSD patients to intervene upon the narratives of their memories. She believes that PTSD, beyond a cognitive wound, represents a spiritual opportunity. The illness distorts and disrupts essential markers of reality like time, embodiment, place. It contradicts basic premises of human existence. When patients recover from PTSD, they emerge with specialized metaphysical knowledge–in other words, superpowers. Dog Rose follows a group of teenage girls who, by confronting their pasts, claim unlimited futures.