From practitioners concerned with post-traumatic stress syndrome in soldiers to theorists exploring testimony and Holocaust survivors it is apparent that war, trauma and memory are closely related concerns. Utilizing varied disciplinary approaches and artifacts crossing modern history, this volume engages the following questions: Do trauma narratives enable us to address the unspeakability of war? How do they complicate our reaction to war? What is the link between the impulse to memorialize war and the traumatic experience of war? What is the relationship between war trauma and national identity? Unit One in this volume addresses commemoration as a means of both individual and collective response to trauma. Unit Two considers how literature and film bear witness, how they re-imagine war trauma, presenting it for an audience that might not otherwise understand that trauma. The final unit examines how identity is shaped by trauma and how that shaping is expressed in narrative.
