Massive forced displacement due to conflict or geographic catastrophes has become a permanent fixture, reconfiguring the global demographic map, reshaping national identities, and creating cultural, religious, and ethnic minorities. Endured subjectively, these events ask for representation as a means to channel the internal pressure caused by traumatic experiences. The purpose of this group is to identify how this is conveyed symbolically and how it affects public discussion surrounding trauma. An interdisciplinary approach is fundamental to comprehensively view trauma representations; the causes of these events are interlocked within the historical, social, political, cultural, geographic, ethnic, religious and legal spheres. Until today, many of these collective traumas are honored, disputed, institutionalized or ignored, with much of the reaction due to how the traumatic event interacts with the wider public through the different languages of human communication. Being aware of how traumatic representation occurs will allow researchers to better understand how trauma paves its way to civilization in various fields, such as arts, philosophy, history, law, religion, urbanism, ethnography, anthropology, psychology, economy, and cultural studies.

The preliminary program is liable to change according to the group’s research needs and according to up-to-date findings across the academic world. The proposed bibliography is intended to be prepared in advance and presented by participants in the form of a seminar, after which discussion will follow. Meetings are supposed to occur via Zoom, in English.

For more information, please contact: marcia.vinha@mail.huji.ac.il