Languages of Trauma
History, Memory, and Media
Published on 24. March 2021
Book
Hardback
424 pages
978-1-4875-0896-8 (ISBN)
Description
This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and 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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"This collection significantly advances trauma studies, a field destined to continue to grow, expand its intellectual purchase and deepen the extent and complexity of its interdisciplinary reach."- Joy Porter, University of Hull (Social History of Medicine)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
43 b&w illustrations, 3 b&w maps
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4875-0896-8 (9781487508968)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
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 Koehne is FONTE visiting professor in the Faculty of Culture, Social Sciences and Education at Humboldt-University Berlin.
Jason Crouthamel is a professor in the Department of History at Grand Valley State University.
Julia Barbara Koehne is FONTE visiting professor in the Faculty of Culture, Social Sciences and Education at Humboldt-University Berlin.
Content
Introduction: Languages of Trauma
Peter Leese, Julia Barbara Koehne, and Jason Crouthamel
Part 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. Keown
2. Religious Language in German Soldiers' Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914-1918
Jason Crouthamel
3. Languages of the Wound: Finnish Soldiers' Bodies as Sites of Shock during World War II
Ville Kivimaeki
4. Efim Segal Shell-shocked Sergeant: Red Army Veterans and the Expression and Representation of Trauma Memories
Robert Dale
5. The Falling Man: Resisting and Resistant Visual Media in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers
Jennifer Anderson Bliss
Part 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 Pols
7. Encounters with Some Things Are Difficult to Say, Re-Membered
Katrina Bugaj
8. Performing Memory in an Interdependent Body
Emily Mendelsohn
9. Memory and Trauma: Two Contemporary Art Projects
Maj Hasager
Part Three: Normalizations of Trauma
10. Between Social Criticism and Epistemological Critique: Critical Theory and the Normalization of Trauma
Ulrich Koch
11. The New Normal: Trauma as Successfully Failed Communication in Nurse Betty
Thomas Elsaesser
12. The Exploitation of Trauma: (Mis-)Representations of Rape Victims in the War Film
Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz
Part Four: Representations in Film
13. Translating Individual and Collective Trauma through Horror: The Case of George A. Romero's Martin
Adam Lowenstein
14. 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 Koehne
15. Perpetrator Trauma and Current American War Cinema
Raya Morag
Coda: Climate Trauma Reconsidered
E. Ann Kaplan
Peter Leese, Julia Barbara Koehne, and Jason Crouthamel
Part 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. Keown
2. Religious Language in German Soldiers' Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914-1918
Jason Crouthamel
3. Languages of the Wound: Finnish Soldiers' Bodies as Sites of Shock during World War II
Ville Kivimaeki
4. Efim Segal Shell-shocked Sergeant: Red Army Veterans and the Expression and Representation of Trauma Memories
Robert Dale
5. The Falling Man: Resisting and Resistant Visual Media in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers
Jennifer Anderson Bliss
Part 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 Pols
7. Encounters with Some Things Are Difficult to Say, Re-Membered
Katrina Bugaj
8. Performing Memory in an Interdependent Body
Emily Mendelsohn
9. Memory and Trauma: Two Contemporary Art Projects
Maj Hasager
Part Three: Normalizations of Trauma
10. Between Social Criticism and Epistemological Critique: Critical Theory and the Normalization of Trauma
Ulrich Koch
11. The New Normal: Trauma as Successfully Failed Communication in Nurse Betty
Thomas Elsaesser
12. The Exploitation of Trauma: (Mis-)Representations of Rape Victims in the War Film
Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz
Part Four: Representations in Film
13. Translating Individual and Collective Trauma through Horror: The Case of George A. Romero's Martin
Adam Lowenstein
14. 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 Koehne
15. Perpetrator Trauma and Current American War Cinema
Raya Morag
Coda: Climate Trauma Reconsidered
E. Ann Kaplan