This panel aims to provoke discussion of “trauma” and the critical paradigm that has grown up around it in our time. Especially since the publication of Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience in 1996, “the traumatic” has grown from a specialist analytic discourse to a catch-all framework that informs how we talk about everything from politics, to art, to personal relationships. In short, the concept of trauma today enjoys a culturally dominant status. In recent years, however, the narrative trope of trauma has served as a target for critics increasingly frustrated with its seeming omnipresence. For example, Parul Sehgal (“The Case Against the Trauma Plot”) and Will Self (“How Everything Became Trauma”) have each made convincing cases that the traumatic has been pushed past its limits. Yet there is a risk, in the context of coming to terms with these limits, of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater by unduly dismissing the importance of what we call trauma. With a view to this impasse, we seek papers that offer substantive critiques of the origins, premises, and afterlives of trauma (studies), or that explore new ways of thinking about and beyond the traumatic.

Conference will take place May 30–June 2, 2025 at George Brown College in Toronto.

For more information, visit https://accute.ca/2025-call-for-papers/.

Paper proposals must be submitted by November 29 (extended deadline) through the conference's online form.

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