Trauma Studies

Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity - Book Review

by Dominik Bartmanski

published in 2007 in Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Vol. 31, No. 10: 1–3.

 

Review of the book "Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity" by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Neil... more Review of the book "Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity" by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Neil Smelser, Piotr Sztompka. 2004. Berkeley, the University of California Press, 2004.

Healing communal wounds: A role for psychology in addressing social ills

by David Manier

Whitley, Catrina B. (2012) "Evidence of Violent Conflict in Males from Pot Creek Pueblo," Landscapes of Violence: Vol. 2: No. 2, Article 10.

by Catrina Whitley

Skeletal evidence of violence in the American Southwest is well known and both healed and peri-mortem trauma has been... more Skeletal evidence of violence in the American Southwest is well known and both healed and peri-mortem trauma has been reported at many sites, including high rates of cranial injury supporting evidence of warfare. The present study examines the peri-mortem skeletal injuries in three young males from Pot Creek Pueblo (AD 1260-1320) located in the Taos Valley. Of the individuals analyzed from the Taos Valley, peri-mortem trauma only occurred in these three males, although healed ante-mortem injuries were present in several other individuals. CT scans of the skulls provided an additional method of analysis of the injuries and data necessary to differentiate peri-mortem trauma from post-mortem damage in one case. The pattern of peri-mortem blunt force and chopping force trauma to the skulls and post-cranial remains suggests hand-to hand combat occurred and these individuals died from chopping trauma to the skull, potentially from warfare related activities. Additionally, comparisons of the trauma patterns to rock art dating to the period suggests the type of weapon depicted may have been utilized to inflict the trauma to the skulls.

The Gender of Trauma in Hiroshima Mon Amour and Survival in Auschwitz

by Hugo Joly-Morin

Developments in forensic anthropology: Blunt Force Trauma

by Nicholas Passalacqua

In: Dirkmaat DC (editor). Developments in Forensic Anthropology. Blackwell Publishing:400-412.

'Wounded Minds: Testifying to traumatic events in Ireland and Australia’

by Christina Twomey

in Stuart Ward and Katie Holmes (eds), Exhuming Passions: The Pressure of the Past in Ireland and Australia, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 2011, 37-50.

Osteological Analysis of Burials Recovered from the Schrage Site, (47FD581) Fond Du Lac County, Wisconsin

by Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology

By Ashley Dunford

Published in Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology 3(1): 49-62. (May 2012)
Copyright ©2012 by Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology

In August of 2009, human remains were inadvertently disturbed during construction work associated with USH 151 in... more In August of 2009, human remains were inadvertently disturbed during construction work associated with USH 151 in Calumetville, Wisconsin. One adult was present in partially disturbed contexts beneath the existing pavement of USH 151. An additional burial was encountered during subsequent archaeological monitoring. Data suggest the two burials are located within or near the domestic portion of what was a substantial village. This paper presents the analysis of both burials and compares the context from which each burial was recovered. It is argued that two very different disposal practices are represented at this Developmental Horizon Oneota component ca. A.D. 1200-1300.

Deconstructing PTSD: Traumatic Experiences, Posttraumatic Symptom Clusters, and Mental Health Problems among Delinquent Youth

by Stephen Becker

Patricia K. Kerig, Karin L. Vanderzee, Stephen P. Becker, Rose Marie Ward.
Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 5, 129-144 doi:    10.1080/19361521.2012.671796

This study investigated interrelations among trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom clusters,... more This study investigated interrelations among trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom clusters, and mental health problems among adjudicated adolescents. Girls scored higher than boys on measures of exposure to interpersonal trauma, PTSD symptom clusters, and mental health problems. Results of path analyses were consistent with the hypothesis that PTSD symptom clusters differentially mediate the relations between trauma exposure and mental health problems, with unique patterns of results for boys and girls. For all youth, avoidance mediated the association between trauma and internalizing symptoms whereas reexperiencing and arousal acted as mediators of externalizing. However, for boys only, noninterpersonal traumas also were related to PTSD symptoms, which in turn acted as mediators of internalizing. For girls only, reexperiencing and arousal acted as mediators of internalizing and associated symptoms of PTSD acted as a mediator of externalizing.

Predictors of Recidivism among Delinquent Youth: Interrelations among Ethnicity, Gender, Age, Mental Health Problems, and Posttraumatic Stress

by Stephen Becker

Stephen P. Becker, Patricia K. Kerig, Ji-Young Lim, Rebecca N. Ezechukwu
(2012). Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 5, 145-160.
doi: 10.1080/19361521.2012.671798

This study investigated the interrelations among mental health problems, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), age,... more This study investigated the interrelations among mental health problems, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), age, ethnicity, gender, and recidivism over a three-year period in a sample of 417 male and 170 female juvenile offenders. At the time of first admission to a juvenile detention center, boys reported higher alcohol/drug use, whereas girls reported greater anger/irritability. Caucasian offenders evidenced higher rates of alcohol/drug use and somatic complaints than African American offenders. Younger age was related to higher levels of anger/irritability and depression/anxiety, although older adolescents with PTSD reported the highest levels of alcohol/drug use, anger/irritability, somatic complaints, and depression/anxiety. Across multiple admissions to detention, alcohol/drug use increased for all youth, whereas somatic complaints decreased for boys only. Younger offenders were more likely to recidivate than older offenders; however, girls and younger African American youth with PTSD were more likely to reoffend than were their peers.

After Trauma: Thinking American Culture Beyond 9/11

by Dr. Alexander Dunst

This is a much shorter version of an article published in May 2012 as "After Trauma: Time and Affect in American Literature Beyond 9/11" in the journal Parallax.

Trauma and Memory: The Impact of Apartheid-Era Forced Removals on Coloured Identity in Cape Town

by Henry Trotter

in Mohamed Adhikari (Ed.), Burdened by Race: Coloured Identities in Southern Africa (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2009), pp. 49-78

Communities often cohere around memories of historical suffering: yet coloured South Africans, a people whose diverse... more Communities often cohere around memories of historical suffering: yet coloured South Africans, a people whose diverse ancestry experienced enslavement, dispossession, genocidal extermination, and apartheid degradation, for the most part, they do not invest in remote historical traumas. Most coloured Capetonians instead focus upon a painful experience within living memory: the forced eviction of 150,000 coloured people from their homes and communities in the Cape Peninsula between 1957 and 1985 under the Group Areas Act. It is this experience that gives coloured identity vital resonance, especially amongst working class people, many of whom have yet to overcome the losses of that trauma.

Based on over one hundred life history interviews with coloured and African forced removees, this article examines the impact of Group Areas evictions on contemporary coloured identity. It suggests that, in the wake of mass social trauma, coloured removees coped with their pain by reminiscing with each other about the "good old days" in the destroyed communities. Their removal to racially defined townships ensured that they mainly shared their memories with other coloured people, and much less with African or Indian removees.

Apartheid social engineering to a large extent thus determined the spatial limits within which coloured memories circulated, creating a reflexive, mutually reinforcing pattern of narrative traffic. Over the past four decades, the constant circulation of these nostalgic stories has developed a "narrative community" amongst coloured people in the townships. This experience of popular sharing and support in the context of loss today gives coloured identity in Cape Town a dimension that would be lacking if it were only mobilized for political or economic purposes.

Writing Torture’s Remnants: Sovereign Power, Affect and the War on Terror

by Michael Richardson

Published in 'Torture Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice', 2011, edited by Catherine Barrette, Bridget Haylock and Danielle Mortimer.

This eBook is available for free download.

American use of torture in the war on terror, what is routinely sanitised as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ has... more American use of torture in the war on terror, what is routinely sanitised as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ has not received significant literary attention. Writing about torture and its traumatic affects is made difficult by torture’s assault on subjectivity, language and narrative. In its obsession with not piercing the flesh, American torture renders bodies in their entirety – social and political, flesh and blood – utterly subject to sovereign power and makes precarious the very possibility of a speaking subject. Narratives are ruptured and produced; after, the event remains without closure, unable to become memory. This chapter takes an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere, grounding its analysis in examples from literature, documentary cinema, memoir and confidential correspondence with an anonymous American military intelligence officer, and exploring the problem of writing the traumatic remnants of that torture. Agamben’s work on sovereignty and biopower is used to show how bodies become wholly penetrated by American power, while affect theory, following both Tomkins and Deleuze, provides the conceptual apparatus for an expanded understanding of bodies, and for exploring relations between tortured and torturing bodies. The author’s own fictional work- in-progress on detention and torture during the war on terror frames both the challenges and possibilities in the practice of writing the consequences of torture. The work of Felman and Laub on testimony, and that of Agamben on what he calls ‘neither the dead nor the survivors’ but ‘what remains between,’ provide the basis for an ethic of writing built on the traces of trauma, the remnants of torture that are ever-present in bodies, yet to become memory.

Positive Energy: A Review of the Role of Artistic Activities in Refugee Camps

by Awet Andemicael

published by the United Nations High Commisisoner for Refugees Policy Development and Evaluation Service (UNHCR PDES)

Vulnerability & the Time-Constituting Synthesis

by Emily K. S. Wilkins

I'm working here with Edmund Husserl's account of the structural role of living temporality, and testing its application to cases of severe trauma, in which aspects of the temporal structure appear to suffer "damages" (Brison 2002), (Levi 1989). Your feedback is appreciated!

Loneliness and Belonging: A Reflection on the Meanings and Values of Social Networks in the Wake of the Virginia Tech Shootings

by Curt Gervich

"Hiroshima Sublime: Trauma, Japan, and the US Asia/Pacific Imaginary": DRAFT

by Rob Wilson

“Nothing really matters”: Emotional numbing as a link between trauma exposure and callousness in delinquent youth

by Stephen Becker

Patricia K. Kerig, Diana C. Bennett, Mamie Thompson, Stephen P. Becker.
Journal of Traumatic Stress.
doi: 10.1002/jts.21700

This study investigated the interrelations among trauma exposure, emotional numbing, and callous–unemotional traits in... more This study investigated the interrelations among trauma exposure, emotional numbing, and callous–unemotional traits in a sample of 276 youth (68 girls and 208 boys) recruited from 2 juvenile detention centers. Youth completed interview measures of trauma exposure and betrayal trauma, as well as self-report measures of emotional numbing and callous–unemotional traits. Results of path analyses using nonparametric bootstrapping procedures indicated findings consistent with the hypothesis that the association between trauma exposure and callous–unemotional traits was mediated by the general numbing of emotions, R2 = .40, and also specifically by numbing of sadness, R2 = .27. In addition, further analyses indicated that numbing of fear, R2 = .18, and sadness, R2 = .26, statistically mediated the relations to callous–unemotional traits only for those traumatic experiences involving betrayal. Gender was not found to moderate these effects.

Descolonizar los corazones: discutiendo el modelo traumático para investigar un pasado genocida desde un presente militante

by Diego Benegas Loyo

The Fever Next Time: The Race of Disease and the Disease of Racism in John Edgar Wideman (2002)

by Lisa Lynch

The early organization of memory in school-age children and adolescents

by Alan M. Steinberg, Ph.D.