Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life

by Monica J Casper (Editor), Eric H.R. Wertheimer (Editor)

Trauma is a universal human experience. While each person responds differently to trauma, its presence in our lives nonetheless marks a continual thread through human history and prehistory. In Critical Trauma Studies, a diverse group of writers, activists, and scholars of sociology, anthropology, literature, and cultural studies reflects on the study of trauma and how multidisciplinary approaches lend richness and a sense of deeper understanding to this burgeoning field of inquiry. The original essays within this collection cover topics such as female suicide bombers from the Chechen Republic, singing prisoners in Iranian prison camps, sexual assault and survivor advocacy, and families facing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As it proceeds, Critical Trauma Studies never loses sight of the way those who study trauma as an academic field, and those who experience, narrate, and remediate trauma as a personal and embodied event, inform one another. Theoretically adventurous and deeply particular, this book aims to advance trauma studies as a discipline that transcends intellectual boundaries, to be mapped but also to be unmoored from conceptual and practical imperatives. Remaining embedded in lived experiences and material realities, Critical Trauma Studies frames the field as both richly unbounded and yet clearly defined, historical, and evidence-based.

320 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2016

About the author

Monica J. Casper, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University. Her latest book, BABYLOST: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2022. Casper is founding co-editor of the NYU Press book series “Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the 21st Century” and the University of Arizona book series “The Feminist Wire Books.” She is also a creative writer.

Reviews

[Kidada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent text in an emerging field. Great for accessing research on trauma from different angles.

[Mélanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful, fascinating, well written book. A must-read for anyone interested in trauma studies.