Department of English

This seminar is organized as a laboratory space for graduate students and faculty working in a number of adjacent fields and problems. One half of each three-hour class will be devoted to discussion of a constrained number of readings in the interlinked areas of history and memory studies, cultural representations of collective violence, trauma studies, and other related topics, ranging from seminal works in these areas of inquiry (Freud, Benjamin, Caruth, Nora, la Capra, Leys, etc.) to recent and ground-breaking work. The second half of each session will be devoted to a presentation and discussion of a work in progress—a project either of a member of the course, or of a guest from among Penn graduate students and faculty mem­bers. Seminar discussions will be led by a number of Penn faculty. Conveners of the overall course are David Kazanjian and Kevin M. F. Platt.