ATS3956 · Trauma and memory in the modern world

Overview

How do traumatic histories shape individual lives, political communities, and cultural memory long after violence itself has ended? How do experiences of war, displacement, illness, mourning, shame, and survival become narratable—or resist representation altogether? In this unit you will examine trauma and memory across literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, testimony, political thought, and cultural history. Through topics including world wars, slavery, colonialism, refugee displacement, AIDS activism, depression, and intergenerational memory, the unit explores how difficult experiences persist through haunting, repetition, storytelling, mourning, and everyday life. Rather than approaching trauma as a single event or theory, the unit asks how memories move across generations, encounters, communities, and historical contexts, and how people continue living in the aftermath of violence, loss, and historical rupture.

Areas of study: Holocaust and genocide studies Human rights and social justice Jewish studies

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Within semester assessment: 100%

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. explain and apply key concepts in trauma and memory studies across diverse historical and cultural contexts;
2. analyse the ethical, political, and representational challenges involved in narrating traumatic experience;
3. critically examine how traumatic histories persist through memory, haunting, repetition, testimony, and cultural transmission;
4. evaluate the relationship between violence, subjectivity, community, and historical remembrance in modern societies;
5. develop and communicate sustained analytical or creative-critical arguments through independent engagement with literary, theoretical, historical, and cultural materials.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.