ENGLISH 607.38 - Representing Historical Trauma
Instructor: Dr. Adrienne Kertzer
In this course, we will focus on the specific representational challenges of historical trauma, including the slippery matter of defining it. According to the cultural critic, Ruth Leys, "from the moment of its invention in the late nineteenth century the concept of trauma has been fundamentally unstable." This instability is evident in the scholarship on historical trauma. Does the term describe the trauma an individual experiences because of historical devastation or does it refer to an event, for example, the Holocaust or 9/11? Like other historians, Jay Winter has asked whether we really can transpose "a category of individual psychopathology into the arena of cultural production." Despite such questions about how psychological terminology used by scientists about individuals can be applied to nations and communities, the language of trauma is central to 20th and 21st century explorations of historical memory. In fiction, memoir, graphic novel, and film, representations of historical trauma proliferate.
English 607.38 will trace the genealogy of this development, beginning with the nineteenth-century shift from trauma as a medical term referring to a physical wound to trauma as a psychological concept. It will then turn to the controversies about the meaning and treatment of trauma (shell shock) during World War One, the impact of Holocaust survivor testimony, and the role played by the Vietnam War in legitimizing post-traumatic stress syndrome. Although World War One, the Holocaust, and the Vietnam War are formative moments in this genealogy, students in English 607.38 will have the opportunity to research and write on other representations: for example, historical trauma in depictions of African-American slavery, the Armenian genocide, Hiroshima, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the memoirs of child soldiers, and 9/11. The list is partial and its implications are disturbing, suggesting not only that we find it hard to imagine an historical event today outside the discourse of trauma, but also that we have an endless desire for such representations. In Patricia Yaeger's words, "we inhabit an academic world that is busy consuming trauma." One of the goals of English 607.38 will be to consider the ethics of this consumption; another will be to consider how attention to trauma complicates our understanding of history.
Questions that we will consider include the following:
What is the distinction between structural and historical trauma?
How does trauma relate to the concept of collective memory?
How has recent scientific work on trauma affected literary representations?
Is the distinction between memory and postmemory valid?
What motivates our fascination with trauma?
How do genre, culture, and gender affect the representation of historical trauma?
Tentative and Partial Syllabus
Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." On Metapsychology. Ed. Angela Richards. The Penguin Freud Library 11. Trans. James Strachey. 1984. London: Penguin, 1991. 275-338.
Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, 1925.
Pat Barker. Regeneration. London: Penguin, 1991.
Joseph Boyden. Three Day Road. Penguin, 2006.
Atom Egoyan. Ararat. (film) 2002.
Charlotte Delbo. Auschwitz and After. Trans. Rosette C. Lamont. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.
Claude Lanzmann. Shoah (film) 1985.
Art Spiegelman. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. 2 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1986 and 1991.
Toni Morrison. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Tim O'Brien. In the Lake of the Woods. New York: Penguin, 1994.
Tentative course pack
Studying historical trauma requires attention to theories of memory and a growing body of scholarship on trauma and culture. The course pack will include works such as the following:
Selections from Ruth Leys. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.
Selections from Dominick LaCapra. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.
Selections from Maurice Halbwachs. The Collective Memory. Trans. Francis J. Ditter and Vida Yazdi Ditter. 1950. New York: Harper, 1980.
Richard J. McNally, "What is Psychological Trauma?" Remembering Trauma. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003. 78-104; 294-96.
E. Ann Kaplan. "Why Trauma Now?": Freud and Trauma Studies." Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005. 24-41.
Cathy Caruth, "Introduction: The Wound and the Voice." Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 1-9; 113-17.
Cathy Caruth, "Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History." Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 10-24; 117-21.
Dori Laub, "Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle." Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 61-75.
Claude Lanzmann. "The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude Lanzmann." Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 200-20.
Marianne Hirsch. "Mourning and Postmemory." Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. 17-25; 273-75.
Patricia Yaeger, "Consuming Trauma; or, The Pleasures of Merely Circulating." Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community. Ed. Nancy K. Miller and Jason Tougaw. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2002. 25-51.
