Seminar Proposal for ACLA 2016 (American Comparative Literature Association)
March 17-20, 2016
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

This seminar asks what we can gain by reading the structure of fictional representations of trauma (the "form") against and alongside their metaphoric and thematic resonances (the "content"). If Russian formalism inaugurated the discussion of form and content in interpenetrative terms, trauma theory has also made significant contributions to this subject, most notably in Caruth's idea of belatedness and LaCapra's concepts of absence, loss, and lack. We seek to further these interrogations of the fictional representation of trauma, especially in the domain of postcolonial literature, which has a particularly vexed relationship to the field of trauma theory.

Given the above, this seminar poses a cluster of related questions on the subject of narrative and trauma. How can fictional narratives incorporate the singularity of trauma into their morphology without replicating, intensifying, or trivializing the experience of trauma? How is the experience of reading trauma informed by the granularity of a given form, such as the everyday violence of insidious trauma, the collective suffering of decolonization, or the ambivalence of generational trauma (to name only a few)? Do specific representations of trauma assume correspondingly specific audiences? If so, how do such assumptions constrain, mediate, or interrogate the types of trauma that fictional narratives can explore? How might we figure the encounter between trauma text and audience, and does such an encounter take place within a broader community? Is it possible to balance the singularity of traumatic experience against the commonality of collective trauma in a given nation, event, or historical period?

We invite papers that consider the intersections of form and content in trauma through literature, film, theory, art, or other relevant disciplines. We encourage a wide range of critical approaches, including but not limited to trauma theory, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, memory studies, narratology, reader response theory, affect theory, and phenomenology. Papers that offer thoughtful challenges to existing frameworks for reading trauma are especially welcome.

Abstracts for this seminar can be submitted online via ACLA's online portal (http://www.acla.org/seminar/morphology-trauma-text)from September 1-23, 2015. For more information about submitting an abstract or this year's conference, please see http://www.acla.org/annual-meeting . Additionally, please feel free to contact the panel organizers with any questions regarding this seminar proposal or the abstract submission process.