Drawing from the work of Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Carolyn Yoder has defined historical trauma as “the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations emanating from massive group trauma.” The effects of historical trauma can last for generations, she explains, “even when the next generation is not told the trauma story, or knows it only in broad outline. A ‘conspiracy of silence’ surrounds events for which grieving and mourning have never taken place” (Trauma Healing 13-14). Literary Treatments of the Traumatized US South will use Yoder’s book as a lens for examining the work of several influential fiction-writers to address our country’s most traumagenic events: mass enslavement and a resulting Civil War. This honors course will follow the graduate seminar model as we explore this question, featuring presentations by and discussion among all participants. Each class member will also write and deliver an eight-page presentation-length paper at the ACE Festival; anyone seeking a writing-intensive course credit may develop that project into a fifteen to twenty-page scholarly article appropriate to submit as a graduate-school admission writing sample. (Honors Colloquium)(Spring 2023)
Core: CL, LI
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Integrations