Representing Trauma in American Women’s Literature

Abstract

[Abstract] This round table aimed at exploring how different female traumatic experiences have found expression through literature. For that purpose, the session began with an introduction to the question of trauma in the field of the humanities. Then the discussion focused on the representation of individual trauma through the poems of Anne Sexton. After that, the debate explored how social trauma was transmitted transgenerationally by analyzing Nora Okja Keller’s novel Comfort Woman. Finally, the work of Arab American women writers served to illustrate the issue of collective trauma caused by September 11, 2001.