How should we understand the relationship between land and trauma? In what senses can we think of a landscape as traumatic or traumatized? There are the traumas that may happen upon a landscape through the dispossession of peoples from a piece of land or through war and destruction. There is the direct harm done to a landscape that might not even have human occupants on it through the effects of pollution or clearcutting. And there are the transformations that landscapes go through when storms, wildfires, and floods happen upon them. Are these also types of trauma? How shall we distinguish between different kinds of events? How shall we identify the traumatized parties? Can a landscape itself be traumatized or only its inhabitants? Are natural events inherently traumatic or only when hyperbolized through the feedback loops of climate change? And are some landscapes intrinsically damaged in their being, such as deserts?

In this era of global climate crisis, corporate multinational capitalism, and ongoing territorial conflicts, how shall we think of the experience of living upon a shared, finite earth that is always already exposed to the actions of others? Ultimately, this is what is at stake here; not just our exposure to an unpredictable world that might hurt us but, also, the world’s exposure to an unpredictable humanity that might destroy it and, particularly, to the power of state and corporate actors that try to subject both people and the earth to their will.

Please submit a 200-300 word abstract on this topic at the NeMLA portal located at:

https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21228

Send questions to lariosjm@hollins.edu