Trauma, Narrative, and Resilience, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston

What does it mean to serve as a devoted audience to the sufferers of trauma, enter empathically in the fragmentation of sufferers’ lives, and offer a companionship that encourages the construction of life stories through which hope for a future may be kindled? Addressing such a question becomes imperative as conditions of globalization, war, genocide, and violence associated with population shifts and urban expansion prompt drastic increases in the incidence of trauma and in the devastating repercussions that flow from traumatic experience. In this course we will indeed begin to address the question. We will consider a range of clinical and theoretical accounts ranging from Freud’s and Janet’s to those of recent writers who seek to integrate biological, clinical, and cultural perspectives to understand the phenomenon of trauma. But we will also consider numerous works of fiction that depict and speak from the borderland of trauma’s vacuity, and inquire as to the value of such works in promoting an improved understanding of trauma and in suggesting responses to it that have considerable clinical and therapeutic implications. The course will be divided into three parts: I. Trauma, Narrative, and History; II. War and the Undoing of Character; III. Narrative and Resilience. Two short papers (20% of grade, each), one scholarly essay (40%), and seminar participation (20%) will be required. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.