Psychic trauma can be understood as both a violent breaching of subjective boundaries with long-term aftereffects, and the event that caused the breach. The traumatized individual returns compulsively to the unbearable experience again and again in thought, memory, and dreams, but is unable to move beyond it.
We will read theoretical material by psychologists and psychoanalysts, historians, and cultural scholars, and study representations of trauma in film and literature. Please note that the theoretical ma...