Title: Reading Violence and Trauma in Asia and the World

Series: Routledge Literary Studies in Social Justice

Expected Completion date: 31 May 2024

Expected Publication date: Second half of 2024

When we hear, read, or watch a narrative of a violent or traumatic event, we are often fixated on its representation. Much of the pursuit for an accurate, ethical representation of violent or traumatic events continues to be necessary for our understanding of violence and trauma, and the people and communities who both perpetuate and suffer violence. In Asia, this pursuit is especially urgent owing to the huge diversity of populations and the far-reaching consequences and effects violence has wrought upon them. Armed conflict in Myanmar, Hindu Nationalism in India that had repercussions in England, the explicit censorship of any mention of 4 June or Tiananmen, the Russia-Ukraine war and the war in Syria are some events that make our concerns with the ethics of representing and discussing trauma even more urgent as we negotiate the tensions between trauma and political, historical, literary and cultural representations in written, visual, digital and hybrid forms in the region. We need to think about how discourse and narratives about these and other violent events are produced and how trauma eludes and yet demands representation as it strains against systems of representations. We also need to study issues of reception that influence how we understand, interpret, and engage with trauma and its victims.

This edited collection attempts to explore, with particular emphasis on Asia, the ways in which violence and trauma is (re)enacted, (re)presented, reconciled and consumed through various mediums foregrounding how a constructive tension between theory, method and experience becomes essential for critical discourse on the subject. It will discuss varied and novel ways of understanding violence through multiple perspectives, explore the production and reception of discourse and narratives across different mediums and platforms, and engage with how violence and trauma continue to influence the telling and form of such narratives.

Three broad strands of inquiry run through the collection: violent disruptions and the troubling demands of reconciliation; vulnerability and violence, with an emphasis on the complex issues of race, gender, class and other divisive categories; narrative production and reception. These lines of inquiry entangle and connect all essays in this volume, and it is the attempts to comb through these strands of focus that we hope will lead readers beyond previous approaches and mediums of engaging with violence and trauma.

We invite chapter contributions that:

• Discuss varied and novel ways of understanding and characterising violence and trauma across various mediums and platforms

• Examine how perspectives about trauma are presented and discussed via critical engagements with theories, frameworks and textual analyses.

• Engage with how violence and trauma influence the telling and form of such narratives, with particular emphasis on discourse production and reception

• Consider and explore ways of reading violence and trauma that encourage more inclusive and diverse approaches to trauma

Possible topics include:

• Pandemic-related trauma and violence
• The medical humanities
• Environmental Studies
• Refugee writing
• Explorations of narrative and discourse in understudied mediums and/or genres
• Re-evaluations of theoretical perspectives and frameworks applied to narratives in Asia
• Examinations of narrative production and reception in Asia and other regions

Interested contributors should submit an abstract of 500 words with 5-7 keywords and an author’s bio via email to yrlim@suss.edu.sg or kylye@suss.edu.sg. Please indicate how many images you are planning to use in the chapter (if any), and if any funding was provided for the research.

Authors of selected abstracts will be notified via email.

Abstract and Bio Deadline: 16 June 2023, 23:59 (GMT+8)

Full chapters should be in MS Word format (MLA Ninth Edition), and must be original and unpublished. Each paper should include a cover letter with the name and affiliation of the author and co-author (if any). The name of the author and co-author (if any) must not be written or suggested anywhere else in the chapter except the cover letter. The paper should have a complete bibliography and work cited section.

Full chapters should be submitted by 31 August 2023, 23:59 (GMT+8).

All chapters will undergo a double blind review process. Any suggested revisions by the editors and peer reviewers must be returned within 3 weeks unless there is a prior agreement for other arrangements.