Fictionalising Trauma

With Marguerite Duras being the most disputed French artist after World War II, symbolising trauma represents the most problematic crux of contemporary trauma research. This book brings together these troublesome issues by way of integrating Duras's aesthetics and the challenge of working through major historical trauma. Starting from the concept of an embodied mind as developed in current social neuroscience, the study illuminates the stylistic devices of the famous India Cycle that arose from Duras's relentless struggle with the trauma of French colonialism. It reveals how converting trauma into fiction can become a powerful emotional strategy for surviving traumatic events, which may provoke necessary changes in our cultural memory through collective sharing.

This volume explores the current state of student mental health and trauma while offering theories and practice of trauma-informed teaching and learning. The interdisciplinary authors gathered in this collection discuss the roles, practices, and structures in higher education that can support the wellness and academic success of students who suffer from the effects of traumatic experiences. Chapters cover topics on teaching traumatic materials ethically and effectively, reading and writing to support recovery and healing from trauma, inclusive pedagogies responsive to systemically inflicted trauma, and developing institutional structures to support trauma-informed pedagogies. This timely and important book is designed for faculty in institutions of higher education seeking to meaningfully cultivate trauma-informed classes and learning experiences for their students.

Present book Voices of Marginalisation: Literary Records of Trauma a legendry collection of chapters from notable faculties across India. Book has an effort to present some weaknesses of our Indian society and how to overcome from this scenario. Book has following contents: Contents: Preface Introduction to Voices of Marginalisation Literary Records of Trauma Gender Violence 1. Reading Rape Narratives: Re-living Trauma and Re-constructing the Self. Kanika Katyal 2. Of Ferris Wheels and Love Motels: An Inquiry into the Nature of Pain in Haruki Murakami’s Fiction. Chaandreyi Mukherjee 3. Trauma, Memory and New Alternatives: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Female Protagonists. Madhu Batta Conflict and Trauma 4. Fictionalising Trauma: Narrating Experiences of Women Caught in the Webs of Conflict. Mukuta Borah 5. Delineating the Alienated Writings: The Manipuri Vernacular in the Context of Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Raja Boboy Chiru and Bijit Sinha Pressures of Modernity and the Neo-Colonial State 6. Understanding Trauma Through Post-1947 Literary Production in India from Conflict Zones in India’s Northeast. Anuradha Ghosh ix 7. Recording National Emergency: Literature as History in Times of Censorship. Yamini Trauma and Caste 8. Trauma and Memory: Sociology of Dalit Autobiographies and Biographies. Vivek Kumar 9. Dalit Narratives: Frozen Trauma & Caste in Karukku and Joothan. Charu Arya 10. Representing Trauma: The Dalit Refugees of Bengal. Brati Biswas 11. Memory, History and Power: A Study of Kalyan Rao’s Untouchable Spring. Mukesh Kumar Bairva Memory and History 12. Stuttering Walks and Conflicting Archives: Moments of Trauma in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. Krishnan Unni P. 13. We Played at Disappearing: Analysing Memory and History in Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home. Mubashir Karim Notes on Contributors

Many millions of people are affected by the trauma of war. Psychologists have a good understanding of how experiences of war impact on memory, but the significance of external environmental influences is often disregarded. Memory, War and Trauma focuses on our understanding of the psychosocial impact of war in its broadest sense. Nigel C. Hunt argues that, in order to understand war trauma, it is critical to develop an understanding not only of the individual perspective but also of how societal and cultural factors impact on the outcome of an individual's experience. This is a compelling book which helps to demonstrate why some people suffer from post-traumatic stress while other people don't, and how narrative understanding is important to the healing process. Its multidisciplinary perspective will enable a deeper understanding of both individual traumatic stress and the structures of memory.

A collection of essays by an international group of scholars, The Edges of Trauma: Explorations in Visual Art and Literature addresses the vast cultural and discursive construction that trauma has become in recent decades. Unravelling aspects of representing, narrating, testifying to trauma and of sharing or conveying traumatic non-experience, many of the essays offer new perspectives on traditionally central topics of trauma studies, including shellshock, sexual abuse, the Holocaust, AIDS and 9/11, or on canonical trauma texts, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical writings. Some authors take issue with the at least partly commercially-motivated canonisation of trauma fiction, and with the automatic linking of certain textual features with traumatic experiences. In other essays, trauma works as an interpretative device that allows us to see otherwise familiar texts like Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet and the fiction of Beckett and Agota Kristof in a new light. Other contributors interrogate less obvious cultural and artistic representations – including First World War British painting, Jean-Richard Bloch’s wartime writings, Félix González-Torres’s candy-spills, the photography of Peter Piller and Ori Gersht, and recent American television comedy – in the context of trauma, while one author explores her own artistic practice as part of the working through of traumatic experiences. The Edges of Trauma differs from other volumes concerned with trauma and art in that it gathers together essays on both literature and visual art. These essays are concerned with the relationship between trauma and art, traumatic non-experience and aesthetic experience; exploring how the non-experience of trauma finds its way into artistic representations.

This book examines phenomena from Finnish and Finnish-Swedish literature written in the years between the 1980s and the first decade of the new millennium. Its objective is to study this interesting era of literary history in Finland and to sketch some possible directions for future development by identifying literary turning points which have already occurred.

Bringing together neuroscientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars in cross-disciplinary exploration of the topic of cultural memory, this collection moves from seminal discussions of the latest findings in neuroscience to variegated, specific case studies of social practices and artistic expressions. This volume highlights what can be gained from drawing on broad interdisciplinary contexts in pursuing scholarly projects involving cultural memory and associated topics. The collection argues that contemporary evolutionary science, in conjunction with studies interconnecting cognition, affect, and emotion, as well as research on socially mediated memory, provides innovatively interdisciplinary contexts for viewing current work on how cultural and social environments influence gene expression and neural circuitry. Building on this foundation, Cultural Memory turns to the exploration of the psychological processes and social contexts through which cultural memory is shaped, circulated, revised, and contested. It investigates how various modes of cultural expression—architecture, cuisine, poetry, film, and fiction—reconfigure shared conceptualizing patterns and affectively mediated articulations of identity and value. Each chapter showcases research from a wide range of fields and presents diverse interdisciplinary contexts for future scholarship. As cultural memory is a subject that invites interdisciplinary perspectives and is relevant to studying cultures around the world, of every era, this collection addresses an international readership comprising scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, from advanced undergraduates to senior researchers.

Migrants and Literature in Finland and Sweden presents new comparative perspectives on transnational literary studies. This collection provides a contribution to the production of new narratives of the nation. The focus of the contributions is contemporary fiction relating to experiences of migration. The volume discusses multicultural writing, emerging modes of writing and generic innovations. When people are in motion, it changes nations, cultures and peoples. The volume explores the ways in which transcultural connections have affected the national self-understanding in the Swedish and Finnish context. It also presents comparative aspects on the reception of literary works and explores the intersectional perspectives of identities including class, gender, ethnicity, ‘race’ and disability. Further, it also demonstrates the complexity of grouping literatures according to nation and ethnicity. The case-studies are divided into three chapters: II ‘Generational Shifts’, III ‘Reception and Multicultural Perspectives’ and IV ‘Writing Migrant Identities’. The migration of Finnish labourers to Sweden is reflected in Satu Gröndahl’s and Kukku Melkas’s contributions to this volume, the latter also discusses material related to the placing of Finnish war children (‘krigsbarn’) in Sweden during World War II. Migration between Russia and Finland is discussed by Marja Sorvari, while Johanna Domokos attempts at mapping the Finnish literary field and offering a model for literary analysis. Transformations of the Finnish literary field are also the focus of Hanna-Leena Nissilä’s article discussing the reception of novels by a selection of women authors with an im/migrant background. The African diaspora and the arrival of refugees to Europe from African countries due to wars and political conflicts in the 1970s is the backdrop of Anne Heith’s analysis of migration and literature, while Pirjo Ahokas deals with literature related to the experiences of a Korean adoptee in Sweden. Migration from Africa to Sweden also forms the setting of Eila Rantonen’s article about a novel by a successful, Swedish author with roots in Tunisia. Exile, gender and disability are central, intertwined themes of Marta Ronne’s article, which discusses the work of a Swedish-Latvian author who arrived in Sweden in connection to World War II. This collection is of particular interest to students and scholars in literary and Nordic studies as well as transnational and migration studies.