Are we in the “age of trauma”? Following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (2014) topped numerous bestsellers lists and was featured across BookTok. As topics of trauma circulate throughout the media, this course considers: How has the meaning of and interest in “trauma” shifted in the contemporary American context? 

What are the aesthetic and ethical tensions of representing suffering in literature? 

As race, ability, gender, and sexuality complicate the cultural politics of whose stories are remembered or repressed, what does it mean for literature to bear witness as a mode of repair? 

In this course, we will examine these questions through a comprehensive exploration of criticism and creative works that engage with trauma, memory, and forgetting. We will read a diverse collection of contemporary American literary texts—such as Citizen (2014), WHEREAS (2017), and The Furrows (2022)—to consider the political, social, cultural, and historical manifestations of trauma in the current moment.

"I’m excited to explore the intersections of trauma and memory in the contemporary moment through American literature and media. In this course, we’ll develop familiarity with the history of trauma and memory studies, and gain knowledge about new concepts in the field as we think critically about how the meaning and interest in “trauma” has shifted in the current American context. "

- Course Instructor Maria Siciliano

Maria Siciliano is a doctoral candidate in English and a Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellow in American Culture Studies. She holds a BA with honors in English from Cornell University and an MA in English and American Literature from WashU. Her dissertation research argues that documentary, hybrid poetry (2014-2024) shifts how racialized violence in U.S. history is memorialized, specifically by addressing the reader as witness. She has taught in English, AMCS, and the College Writing Program, and she currently tutors as a graduate fellow at The Writing Center.