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Conflict, War and Trauma in Anglophone Literature and Culture

Code: 45365 ECTS Credits: 5
2024/2025
Degree Type Year
3500084 English Studies: Linguistic, Literary and Sociocultural Perspectives OT 1

Contact

Name:
Maria Cristina Pividori Gurgo
Email:
mariacristina.pividori@uab.cat

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

This optional module is designed for students with a keen interest and enthusiasm for reading and debating contemporary literary works in English related to war and conflict. The course engages with the issue of how past conflicts can be accessed and interpreted from the present, encouraging students to develop both ethical considerations and critical responses. Through an examination of  poetry, short stories, fiction, and drama, students will explore how conflict and its traumatic memories are represented, remembered, and reinterpreted. The way in which the selected authors interpret past conflicts and the instances of the past they choose to highlight is significant not only for its individual interest, but also because it can influence students' understanding of "established war narratives" and potentially uncover new perspectives that might otherwise go unnoticed.

To pass this module, students must have a C1 level of English or its equivalent. This is because they will need to produce practical work with advanced texts in the field of literature, which requires a deep understanding of the subject and the use of critical skills.


Objectives and Contextualisation

In examining war, trauma, and their representation within contemporary Anglophone literature, we recognize literature's exceptional capacity to engage with the past meaningfully. While war can be remembered through various mediums like films, photographs, memorials, and personal objects, literature stands out for capturing its emotional and psychological complexities. Literature provides a space for reflection, empathy, and understanding, immortalising individual and collective memories and offering insights that are both historically significant and deeply human. The central aim of this course is to analyse to what extent contemporary Anglophone literature effectively establishes representational spaces for reconsidering the major wars and conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries, in contexts removed from the war itself.

Upon completing this module, students will attain an academic understanding of the following topics:

  • Ethics and war representation
  • Mediated war memories: (Post) memory, melancholy, and nostalgia
  • The silences of war
  • The interplay between personal and collective memories
  • Gender Wars: The impact of war on gender identity and relations
  • Echoes from the margins: Women writing about war and the feminist critique
  • Violence beyond combat: sexual violence in conflict zones
  • Displacement and refugee experiences: The ethics of walls, boundaries, and borderlands
  • Historical and Contemporary Conflicts
  • Interdisciplinary Approaches: The intersection of literature with film and photography
  • Continuities and discontinuities in the depiction of war across different periods
  • The interplay between literature, culture, and historiography
  • Psychological implications of displacement: Trauma, post-traumatic stress, coping mechanisms, and recovery
  • First and second-hand narratives from genocide survivors
  • The perpetrator psyche: Patterns of representation, omission, and distortion

Learning Outcomes

  1. CA12 (Competence) Formulate your own research proposals that investigate how literature and culture can resolve social challenges related to situations of trauma and historical memory processes.
  2. CA13 (Competence) Make gender biases visible in cultural and literary representations of war, conflict, and trauma.
  3. KA11 (Knowledge) Describe the theories applied to the study of conflict, war, and trauma in various English language literary genres.
  4. KA12 (Knowledge) Relate key theoretical notions to the analysis of English-language literary and cultural productions related to conflict, war, and trauma.
  5. KA13 (Knowledge) Contrast the epistemological and analytical principles of the various approaches used for the study of representations of conflict, war, and trauma.
  6. SA18 (Skill) Construct a personal discourse based on critical reading of academic articles related to literary and cultural representations of conflict, war, and trauma.
  7. SA19 (Skill) Examine cultural and literary productions belonging to various fiction and non-fiction genres related to the representation of conflict, war, and trauma.

Content

Through the study of poetry, short stories, a novel, and a play, we will explore the lingering effects that conflicts such as the Great War, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War, among others, have on individuals and their families, providing students with a comprehensive knowledge of how contemporary literature captures the emotional and psychological complexities of war trauma.

UNIT 1: Poetry

  • “An Unseen” by Carol Ann Duffy/"The Send-Off" by Wilfred Owen from 1914: Poetry Remembers (2013)
  • "Bantam" by Jackie Kay/"Survivors" by Siegfried Sassoon from 1914: Poetry Remembers (2013)
  • "Memory" by Lawson Fusao Inada from Legends from Camp (1993)
  • "Vietnam Epic Treatment" by Donald Revell from There Are Three (1992)
  • "The Hurt Locker" by Brian Turner from Here, Bullet (2004)
  • "I don't normally talk to strangers" by Claudia Rankine from Don't Let me Be Lonely (2004)
  • "We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky (2013, Poetry International website)

UNIT 2: Short Story

  • "Helmut" by Rachel Seiffert from The Dark Room (2001)
  • "Fatherland" by Viet Thanh Nguyen from The Refugees (2017)
  • "Redeployment" by Phil Klay from Redeployment (2014)

UNIT 3: Novel

In this unit, we will read and discuss The Things We Do To Make it Home by Beverly Gologorsky (1999).

UNIT 4: Play
This unit features the play Ruined by Lynn Nottage (2008). 

Among the topics we will discuss, we can highlight the following:

  • How should war be narrated? What values should literature uphold?
  • Witnessing, Seeing, and Remembering: What do these conceptsmean in the context of war? How do they shape our understanding of conflict?
  • How does contemporary literature engage with the commemoration, memory, and understanding of war?
  • How should society react to mass slaughter? Should tragedy be the dominant literary form in depicting war?
  • In what ways does warfare alter gender roles and sexuality?
  • What ethical considerations arise when representing war? How do authors deal with the moral complexities of depicting violence and suffering?
  • How is trauma portrayed in contemporary literature? What literary techniques are used to convey the psychological impact of war on individuals and communities
  • How is sexual violence during war depicted? What are the implications for understanding the broader impact of conflict on society?
  • How do literary works address the themes of displacement and the refugee experience? What ethical and emotional challenges are highlighted?
  • How does postmemory influence the representation of war and trauma in literature? What role do second and third-generation narratives play in preserving and interpreting the memories of conflict? 

Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Class Debate 20 0.8 CA12, CA13, KA11, KA12, KA13, SA18, SA19
Lectures 11.25 0.45 CA13, KA11, KA12, KA13, SA19
Type: Supervised      
Class participation and oral presentations 22 0.88 CA12, CA13, KA11, KA12, KA13, SA18, SA19
Type: Autonomous      
Reading and study 46.75 1.87 CA12, KA11, KA12, KA13, SA18, SA19

1 ECTS credit = 25 hs; 5 credits = 125 hs

Methodology is based on:

  • Guided Activities (31, 25 hours)
  • Supervised Activities (22 hours)
  • Autonomous Activities (46,75 hours)
  • Assessment (25 hours)

 

This subject relies on the active exchange of ideas between the teacher and students, as well as among the students themselves. This approach necessitates a high level of preparation and active participation from everyone. Additionally, students will be expected to deliver presentations in class.

Mandatory attendance is required, and students are expected to have thoroughly read both the primary and secondary materials. While the course primarily focuses on contemporary literature, it also demands a certain level of historical knowledge. Class discussions will involve relevant historical contexts, and students will be assigned additional readings throughout the course.

All information regarding these additional readings and related tasks will be published on the Virtual Campus.

Additionally, within the schedule set by the center or degree program, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Oral presentations 20% 3 0.12 CA12, CA13, KA11, KA12, KA13, SA18, SA19
Writing Tasks 80% 22 0.88 CA12, CA13, KA11, KA12, KA13, SA18, SA19

1) CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT

CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT WILL BE BASED ON:

  • Two Short Essays (20% each): These essays will address specific topics related to the poetry and short stories covered in the course.
  • Final Paper (40%): This paper will be based on either the novel, the play, or a combination of both. The instructor will provide a list of topics/questions for you to choose from.
  • Oral Assessment (20%): This will be based on class participation and an individual presentation.

Exact dates for all evaluation activities will be confirmed at the start of the course through a course calendar published on the class Moodle.

PLEASE, NOTE:

  • All the exercises are COMPULSORY
  • The submission of any of the exercises invalidates the student to get a "Not assessed/Not submitted" course grade.
  • On carrying out each assessment activity, lecturers will inform students (on Moodle) of the procedures to be followed for reviewing all grades awarded, and the date on which such a review will take place. In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB's virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.

 2) SINGLE ASSESSMENT

THE PROCEDURE FOR SINGLE ASSESSMENT IS BASED ON:

4 Evaluated items to be done in a single in-class exam:

  • Item 1 and 2: 2 short essays on one of the short stories/poems (20% each)
  • Item 3: A critical essay on the novel/play/both (40%).
  • Item 4: Oral Presentation (20%)

REASSESSMENT: Re-assessment for this subject requires a content-synthesis test for each module component. The oral presentation is not eligible for re-assessment. The definitive grade awarded for a re-assessed itme will be 5.

VERY IMPORTANT: Students must learn to respect the intellectual property of others, identifying any source they may use, and take responsibility for the originality and authenticity of the texts they produce. In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject. Irregularities refer, for instance, to copying in an exam, copying from sources without indiacting authorship, or a misuse of AI such as presenting work as original that has been generated by an AI tool or programme. These evaluation activities will not be re-assessed.


Bibliography

Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.

Cohen-Pfister, Laurel. “The Suffering of the Perpetrators: Unleashing Collective Memory in German Literature of the Twenty-First Century.”  Forum for Modern Language Studies 41.2 (2005):123-35.

Chattarji, Subarno. Memories of a Lost War: American Poetic Responses to the Vietnam War. Oxford University Press 2001. 

Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. Routledge, 1992.

Franklin, Ruth. A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Fresco, Nadine. “Remembering the Unknown.” The International Review of Psychoanalysis. 11.4. 1984: 417-427.

Gupta, Suman. Imagining Iraq: Literature in English and the Iraq Invasion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Gwyer, Kirstin. “Beyond Lateness? ‘Post-memory’and the Late(st) German-Language Family Novel.” New German Critique (2015): 137-153.

Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Post-memory. Harvard University Press, 1997. 

———. The Generation of Post-memory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia University Press, 2012.

Hoffman, Eva. After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. Vintage, 2005.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. 1988. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Huyssen, Andreas. “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.” Public Culture. 12.1 (2000): 21-38.

Ignatieff, Michael. “The New World Disorder.”  The New York Review of Books.

LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. 2001. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Lynd, Staughton. Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014. 

Melling, Philip H. Vietnam in AmericanLiterature. Mass, 1990.

McLoughlin, Kate. Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq. Cambridge UP, 2011.

Neumann, Birgit. “What Makes Literature Valuable: Fictions of Meta-Memory and the Ethics of Remembering” In Erll Astrid et al. (Eds.) Ethics in Culture the Dissemination of Values through Literature and Other Media. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2008: 131-152.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. First Harvard University Press, 2016.

Nussbaum, Martha. Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Beacon Press, 1995.

O’Donoghue, Samuel. “Postmemory as Trauma? Some Theoretical Problems and Their Consequences for Contemporary Literary Criticism.” Politika. 26 Jun, 2018.

Pividori, Cristina. “Out of the Dark Room: Photography and Memory in Rachel Seiffert’s Holocaust Tales” Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.2 (December 2008): 79–94.

Plate Liedeke. Transforming Memories in Contemporary Women’s Rewriting. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Rigney, Anne. “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts between monumentality and morphing.” In Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Eds.). Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook Walter de Gruyter, 2008. 345-353.

Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Crises of Memory and the Second World War. Harvard University Press, 2006.

Vickroy, L. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. University of Virginia, 2002. 

Wagoner, Brady. Handbook of Culture and Memory. Oxford University Press, 2018.

White, Hayden. Metahistory: the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Johns Hopkins UP, 1973.

Winter, Jay. “Thinking about Silence” in Ben-Ze’ev, Efrat, Ginio, Ruth and Winter, Jay (Eds). Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge UP, 2010: 3-31.

———.War Beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the Present. Cambridge UP, 2018.

 


Software

Moodle


Language list

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(TEm) Theory (master) 1 English first semester morning-mixed