Trauma and Public Memory

by Goodall, Jane; Lee, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9781137406798
• ISBN10: 1137406798
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-01-26
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

During the past decade there has been a rapid growth in literature on traumatic experience, but what remains missing from the expanding field of commentary is any sustained consideration of how those who are outsiders to the experience deal with the challenge of its presence in their world. Related to this are some fundamental questions about how traumatic events are acknowledged in the public domain and come to form part of the fabric of public memory. The contributing writers to this collection are primarily from humanities and cultural history, though there are also essays from specialists in psychology and the social sciences, and interviews with professionals who have a primary involvement with traumatic events. Contributions focus on key traumatic media events of the last decade as well as those during the twentieth century in countries such as the USA, Europe, Japan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Cuba and Australia.

Author Biography

Jane Goodall is adjunct Professor with the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her most recent publications include two essays on the theme of cultural trauma: 'Bucharest in Recovery', Griffith Review (2012) and 'When the Present Comes to Get You' (in John Potts and Charles Merewether (eds.), After the Event: New Perspectives in Art History (2010).
 
Christopher Lee is Professor and Head of the School of Humanities at Griffith University, Australia. His research explores interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural history. He is a former national President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, and a founding editor of its internationally refereed journal JASAL.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; Jane Goodall and Christopher Lee
PART I: OVERVIEWS
1.''But Why Should You People at Home Not Know?': Sacrifice as a Social fact in the Public Memory of War; Christopher Lee
2.Trauma, Dispossession and Narrative Truth: 'Seeds of the Nation' of South Sudan; Wendy Richards
3.Trauma and the Stoic Foundations of Sympathy; Jane Goodall
4.Unremembered: Memorial, Sentimentality, Dislocation; Laurie Johnson
PART II: INTERVIEWS
5.Ross Anderson, Clinical Psychologist
6.Therese Lee, Emergency Nursing Specialist
7.Norman Fry, Disaster Response Co-ordinator, Toowoomba Regional Council
8.Sue Hewett, Senior Recovery Officer and Tanya Milligan, Chair of Human and Social Response Committee for the Lockyer Valley Council
9.Mark Willacy, Foreign Correspondent Australian Broadcasting Commission
PART III: REFLECTIONS
10. Unburied Trauma and the Exhumation of History: An American Genealogy; Lindsay Tuggle
11. The Atrocity Tour; Lindsay Barrett
12. Regaining Lost Humanity: Dealing with Trauma in Exile; Robert Mason and Geoffrey Parkes
13. Popular Entertainments as Survival Strategies During World War Two; Victor Emeljanow
14. A Soldier's Perspective; Richard Gehrman
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index