Trauma and memory in the modern world

What it covers

How do traumatic histories shape individual lives, political communities, and cultural memory long after violence itself has ended? How do experiences of war, displacement, illness, mourning, shame, and survival become narratable—or resist representation altogether? In this unit you will examine trauma and memory across literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, testimony, political thought, and cultural history. Through topics including world wars, slavery, colonialism, refugee displacement, AIDS activism, depression, and intergenerational memory, the unit explores how difficult experiences persist through haunting, repetition, storytelling, mourning, and everyday life. Rather than approaching trauma as a single event or theory, the unit asks how memories move across generations, encounters, communities, and historical contexts, and how people continue living in the aftermath of violence, loss, and historical rupture.

Assessment

When and where