Our sacred texts have the potential to become texts of torture or texts of liberation. History through Trauma explores the symbolic function of religious, political, and national symbols that aid in the construction of historical narratives, and the psychological effects of trauma on their creation and dissolution. The Deuteronomic Covenant, paramount in the construction of a biblical history of Israel, is analyzed with regard to Israel's history of exile. What is proffered is the book of Job as a symbolic history of Israel that stands as a counter-history beside the dominant history constructed in the canon's historical books--a counter-history whose function works to re-enliven the symbol of covenant. History through Trauma brings consciousness to the effects of exile on the dominant historical narratives in the Hebrew canon and to the eradicated affective experiences of trauma that surface in counter-texts such as the book of Job. This work offers a valuable new understanding of the impact of trauma on history-making in general--an understanding that brings light to biblical studies, practical theology, pastoral psychology, and psychoanalysis.

"Today there is evidence that most minority groups in the United States suffer from symptoms related to intergenerational transmission of collective historical trauma. For those with additional mental health issues, treatment can become complicated unless underlying historical hostilities are addressed. This practical text, by David S. Derezotes, helps readers understand the causes and treatment of historical trauma at an individual, group, and community level and demonstrates how a participatory, strengths-based approach can work effectively in its treatment."--Publisher's website.

This volume explores intergenerational trauma among refugee communities displaced throughout the world. Considering patterns and findings across disciplines, cultural contexts, and methodologies, the volume addresses the way trauma is passed on generationally among populations characterized by a large exodus from various regions, and communities in which intergenerational trauma can be observed among second-generation youth. Drawing on studies of displaced communities worldwide, this comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis examines the effects of transgenerational trauma. It explores definitions and concepts of intergenerational trauma, comparing and contrasting perspectives across generations, and the mechanisms at work in its transmission. The volume is well suited for scholars across social sciences with interests in memory studies, political violence, and refugee and diaspora studies.

What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long? Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different thinkers in diverse contexts have conceived their activities, and to illustrate the purposes that their historical investigations have served. Whether considering Herodotus, medieval religious exegesis, or twentieth-century cultural history, at the core of this work is the way that the present has been conceived to relate to the past. Alongside many changes in technique and philosophy, Donald Bloxham's book reveals striking long-term continuities in justifications for the discipline.

This book provides case-studies of how teachers and practitioners have attempted to develop more effective ‘experiential learning’ strategies in order to better equip students for their voluntary engagements in communities, working for sustainable peace and a tolerant society free of discrimination. All chapters revolve around this central theme, testing and trying various paradigms and experimenting with different practices, in a wide range of geographical and historical arenas. They demonstrate the innovative potentials of connecting know-how from different disciplines and combining experiences from various practitioners in this field of shaping historical memory, including non-formal and formal sectors of education, non-governmental workers, professionals from memorial sites and museums, local and global activists, artists, and engaged individuals. In so doing, they address the topic of collective historical traumas in ways that go beyond conventional classroom methods. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book provides a combination of theoretical reflections and concrete pedagogical suggestions that will appeal to educators working across history, sociology, political science, peace education and civil awareness education, as well as memory activists and remembrance practitioners.

History and memory rank as central themes in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. As one of the last philosophers of the 19th century, Nietzsche naturally belongs to the so-called ‘historical century’. The contentious exchange with the past and with antiquity – as much as the mechanisms, the dangers, and the lessons of memory and tradition – are continually examined and stand in close relationship with Nietzsche’s vision of life and his project of human development. As Jacob Burckhardt once wrote of the cultural critique to his Basel colleague: "Fundamentally, you are always teaching history" (9/13/1882). Following Burckhardt’s judgment, the contributors focus on the analysis of core questions in the philosophies of history and memory, and their respective convergence in the thought of Nietzsche. The epistemological relevance of these central concepts will be thematized alongside those concerning tradition, and education. The discussion of these rich themes unifies a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from cultural memory to contemporary philosophy of mind. The contributions are revised versions of selected papers presented at the 2018 conference of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in Naumburg.

The author argues that by using literary trauma theory in conjunction with a reader response approach, readers can gain a better understanding of how poetry can work towards building community and encouraging empowerment over oppression by establishing collectives of people who may share similar stories and experiences connected to trauma. Rather than demonstrating how the poetry may fail or trying to establish what traumatic events the speaker (or poet, in some studies) may have encountered and the significance thereof, this study focuses on how the reader may find community with the ideas represented within the poem. The poetry of various ethnicities are examined, including African American poets Amiri Baraka and Lucille Clifton, Native American poets Robin Coffee, Linda Hogan, and Peter Blue Cloud, as well as Japanese American poets Mitsuye Yamada, Keiho Soga, and Lawson Fusao Inada. Although many of these poets have had their poems examined in the past, none have been explored through this type of approach. Furthermore, very few studies have expanded upon the ideas of literary trauma theory by using reader response, and no writings have examined the idea of ambivalence in poetry as this study does.

In the age of the war on terror and what one critic has called 'disaster capitalism', the topic of trauma has assumed renewed cultural relevance. Trauma, Historicity, Philosophy is a collection of essays by Australian philosophers, psychoanalysts, and cultural theorists on the genealogy, semantics, and relevance of the concept of 'trauma' in the contemporary world. The collection features two essays by Agnes Heller and Gyorgy Markus addressing trauma, and what psychoanalysis' elevation of 'trauma' to cultural centrality means (and has meant) for modern philosophy and social theory. Other essays address '911', cyber-terrorism, the shoah, political tyranny, the 'end of history', and engage with the thought of Kierkegaard, Schmitt, Hobbes, Derrida, Agamben, Badiou, Zizek, Lacan and Freud.

Death, wrote Walter Benjamin, lends storytellers all their authority. How do trials, in turn, borrow their authority from death? This book offers a groundbreaking account of the surprising interaction between trauma and justice. Moving from texts by Arendt, Benjamin, Freud, Zola, and Tolstoy to the Dreyfus and Nuremberg trials, as well as the trials of O. J. Simpson and Adolf Eichmann, Shoshana Felman argues that the adjudication of collective traumas in the twentieth century transformed both culture and law. This transformation took place through legal cases that put history itself on trial, and that provided a stage for the expression of the persecuted--the historically "expressionless." Examining legal events that tried to repair the crimes and injuries of history, Felman reveals the "juridical unconscious" of trials and brilliantly shows how this juridical unconscious is bound up with the logic of the trauma that a trial attempts to articulate and contain but so often reenacts and repeats. Her book gives the drama of the law a new jurisprudential dimension and reveals the relation between law and literature in a new light.

This Companion provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the conceptual issues that history as a discipline and mode of thought gives rise to. The book offers both historical and systematic treatments of these issues, as well as addressing their contemporary relevance. Structured in three parts – Modes and Schools of Historical Thought, Epistemology and Metaphysics of History, and Issues and Challenges in Historical Theory – it offers the reader a wide scope and expert treatment of each topic in this vibrant field that can be read in any order. An international team of experts both discuss the basis of their topic and present their own view, offering the reader a cutting-edge contribution while ensuring their chapters are of interest to both students and specialists in the field of historical theory and engaging with the very nature of historical thought, the metaphysics of historical existence, the politics of history-writing, and the intelligibility of the historical process. The volume is an indispensable companion to the study of history and essential reading for anyone interested in the reflection on the nature of history and our historical existence.