Four graduate English students -- Naomi Coufal, Leslie Cairns, Abigail Griffin and Jill Durland – will conduct a symposium on trauma, which has emerged as a predominate preoccupation of literary critics over the last 30 years, on Thursday, Feb . 26, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Williams Center Room 204E.
Drawing on their ongoing research on trauma, the students will address “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” World War I poetry and trauma in young adult literature. Dr. Barish Ali, an English professor at SUNY Buffalo State, will serve as the respondent.
Initially a medical/psychological term that received its first extensive description in Sigmund Freud’s classical study, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” published in 1919, trauma has increasingly drawn the attention of literary scholars for the way in which it highlights issues of linguistic breakdown, un-representability and writing as a curative strategy.
The symposium is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Support for the event has been provided by the Graduate Studies Office, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the English Department’s Mary Louise White Fund.
