ENGL 4545

Trauma, Encounter and Address

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2021-2022.

Trauma is often conceived as a catastrophic experience that escapes full comprehension. But we may also think of it as a sudden or ongoing experience that fundamentally affects our ability to be heard by, or address, others. What would it mean to rethink the theory of trauma around the collapse of address? We will examine works that engage with individual and collective trauma in its political, cultural, and historical manifestations within and across cultures (and species). We will ask what it means to have one's capacity to address eliminated and how it can be reconstituted through writing and art. The course will include literary, philosophical, literary theoretical, scientific and psychoanalytic texts as well as films from South Africa, Tunisia, Martinique, France, and the US.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (CA-AS, ALC-AS)

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