Languages of Trauma: History, Memory, and Media
© 2021
This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral or written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights.
Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa – striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 432 pages
- Illustrations: 43
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 1.0in x 9.0in
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Reviews
“Languages of Trauma provides an introduction to a different strand of trauma theory, outlining critiques of earlier generations in the history of the discipline and analyzing new avenues and approaches currently trending. For its scope, ambition, and inter-disciplinarity, this book provides a major contribution to research.”
Aris Mousoutzanis, 'Principal Lecturer in Film & Screen Studies', University of Brighton.
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Author Information
Peter Leese is an associate professor in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
Jason Crouthamel is a professor in the Department of History at Grand Valley State University.
Julia Barbara Köhne is FONTE visiting professor in the Faculty of Culture, Social Sciences and Education at Humboldt-University Berlin. -
Table of contents
Introduction: Languages of Trauma
Peter Leese, Julia Barbara Köhne, and Jason CrouthamelPart One: Words and Images
1. “A perfect hell of a night which we can never forget”: Narratives of Trauma in the Private Writings of British and Irish Nurses in the First World War
Bridget E. Keown2. Religious Language in German Soldiers’ Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914–1918
Jason Crouthamel3. Languages of the Wound: Finnish Soldiers’ Bodies as Sites of Shock during World War II
Ville Kivimäki4. Efim Segal Shell-shocked Sergeant: Red Army Veterans and the Expression and Representation of Trauma Memories
Robert Dale5. The Falling Man: Resisting and Resistant Visual Media in Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers
Jennifer Anderson BlissPart Two: Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts
6. Performing Songs and Staging Theatre Performances: Working through the Trauma of the 1965 Indonesian Mass Killings
Dyah Pitaloka and Hans Pols7. Encounters with Some Things Are Difficult to Say, Re-Membered
Katrina Bugaj8. Performing Memory in an Interdependent Body
Emily Mendelsohn9. Memory and Trauma: Two Contemporary Art Projects
Maj HasagerPart Three: Normalizations of Trauma
10. Between Social Criticism and Epistemological Critique: Critical Theory and the Normalization of Trauma
Ulrich Koch11. The New Normal: Trauma as Successfully Failed Communication in Nurse Betty
Thomas Elsaesser12. The Exploitation of Trauma: (Mis-)Representations of Rape Victims in the War Film
Marzena Sokołowska-ParyżPart Four: Representations in Film
13. Translating Individual and Collective Trauma through Horror: The Case of George A. Romero’s Martin
Adam Lowenstein14. Aesthetic Displays of Perpetrators in Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing: Post-Atrocity Perpetrator Symptoms, Re-enactments of Violence, and Perpetrator-Victim-Inversions
Julia Barbara Köhne15. Perpetrator Trauma and Current American War Cinema
Raya MoragCoda: Climate Trauma Reconsidered
E. Ann Kaplan
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Subjects and Courses
communication and cultural studies \ media studies
communication and cultural studies
film and performance studies \ film studies \ world cinema
film and performance studies \ film studies
film and performance studies \ theatre drama 1
film and performance studies
history \ modern history
history
literary studies \ english literature 20th and 21st century
literary studies