ECS 7860 - Memory, Storytelling & Trauma

Trauma may be understood as a radical loss or violation, a nightmarish upending of the expected and recognized world, or a series of breaks in whatever counts as a coherent, recognized, and sustaining sense of body, self, relationships, and/or community. Memories organized around trauma may become isolated and endlessly repetitive or they may be repressed. Storying, which seeks to impose retrospective coherence, may so violate cultural conventions of intelligibility as to seem melodramatic, mythical, or deceptive (or, conversely, may fall into cliched, accepted templates of victim or her). This course explores the ways in which trauma and the aftermath of trauma are given shape in memory and storytelling, the ways in which narrative expresses and/or conceals trauma, and the possibilities for recovery or reconstruction through educational, artistic, communal, political, social, and/or legal work.