13th Annual Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference and Workshop

How do individuals and societies form trauma responses to periods of recognizable societal shifts. How does identity adjust to trauma and recovery? The consistency of change in a society’s values and customs often scar communities with conflicting reactions: for some, change is welcome and embraced, for others it is a threat that must be fought, and for others still the perpetuity of change demands the incentive to remove oneself from the equation, if only temporarily. The combination of these force a reconciliation of how we see ourselves, how we allow others to see us, and how we manipulate (and are manipulated by) our chosen realities.

We also seek to examine how societies and individuals frame recent historical trauma and how this trauma is integrated into the national narrative through a variety of approaches, including amnesia, memorialization, revisionism, mourning, and melancholy. We welcome topics which engage with questions of personal, political, or cultural reactions to periods of heightened social disruption in any form of media (Literature, Cinema, Fine-Arts, etc.). The conference is open (but not limited) to fields such as History, Literature, Anthropology, Philosophy, Art History, and Sociology.

This conference seeks to explore the range of strategies and mechanisms used to express or reject engagement with traumatic shifts in social norms.

Click here to see the conference schedule.

Click here to join!