Call for Presentations
4th Global Conference
Saturday 22nd March – Tuesday 25th March 2014
Prague, Czech Republic
Prague, Czech Republic
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to examine and explore issues surrounding individual and collective trauma in terms of practice, theory and lived reality. Trauma studies has emerged from its foundation in psychoanalysis to be a dominant methodology for understanding contemporary events and our reactions to them. Critics have argued that we live in a ‘culture of trauma.’ Repeated images of suffering and death form our collective and/or cultural unconscious. The third global conference seeks papers on a variety of issues related to trauma including: the function of memory, memorial, and testimony; collective and cultural perspectives; the impact of time; and the management of personal and political traumas.
Trauma has a thematic identity that exists on the interdisciplinary fringes of other subject areas, either peripherally nudging, or fully penetrating existing research, shifting cultures and influencing global politics. Thus, while we continue to welcome research papers of core theoretical and clinical interest, we would also warmly encourage those papers that address: critical questions of practice; practical projects; first-hand survivor/bystander reports of individual and collective experiences; and, those that interrogate, critique, represent, or create works that deal with fictional and actual traumatic events.
We would also like to encourage presentations that take the following forms: auto-ethnographical and experiential accounts, case studies, papers, performance pieces, reports, works of art, works-in-progress, and workshops.
Finally, submissions which engage with the aftermath of trauma as a space of potential opportunity for change, emotional growth, identity shifts, or developing spirituality are particularly welcome across any of the following themes.
1. Public and Political Trauma
~ War and trauma, both past and present
~ Captivity and torture
~ Public disasters and trauma including environmental catastrophes
~ Disease, public health and trauma
~ Political trauma, silencing dissent/voicing dissent
~ Social trauma
~ Traumatic displacement and cultural uprooting
~ Inherited intergenerational trauma
~ War and trauma, both past and present
~ Captivity and torture
~ Public disasters and trauma including environmental catastrophes
~ Disease, public health and trauma
~ Political trauma, silencing dissent/voicing dissent
~ Social trauma
~ Traumatic displacement and cultural uprooting
~ Inherited intergenerational trauma
2. Personal and Individual Trauma
~ Bereavement: parent; sibling; partner loss
~ Abandonment
~ Betrayal
~ Peer pressure and bullying
~ Murder and assault
~ Domestic violence
~ Child abuse and childhood trauma
~ Survivor guilt
~ Disability
~ Witnessing trauma and secondary trauma
~ Coping strategies – stress management and reduction
~ Bereavement: parent; sibling; partner loss
~ Abandonment
~ Betrayal
~ Peer pressure and bullying
~ Murder and assault
~ Domestic violence
~ Child abuse and childhood trauma
~ Survivor guilt
~ Disability
~ Witnessing trauma and secondary trauma
~ Coping strategies – stress management and reduction
3. Diagnosing and Treating Trauma
~ Medical, therapeutic, and holistic approaches to trauma management
~ Non-medical therapies/approaches – the uses of drama, dance, narrative, bibliotherapy and scriptotherapy, music, art, and digital technologies
~ Vicarious traumatisation, secondary stress, and compassion fatigue
~ From person to survivor – perspectives of change
~ Medical, therapeutic, and holistic approaches to trauma management
~ Non-medical therapies/approaches – the uses of drama, dance, narrative, bibliotherapy and scriptotherapy, music, art, and digital technologies
~ Vicarious traumatisation, secondary stress, and compassion fatigue
~ From person to survivor – perspectives of change
4. Theorising Trauma
~ Trauma and post colonialism
~ Memory
~ National identity
~ Trauma studies
~ Individual versus collective trauma
~ Socio-cultural perspectives on traumatic experience
~ Gender
~ The body from the inside and out
~ Psychic trauma
~ Trauma and post colonialism
~ Memory
~ National identity
~ Trauma studies
~ Individual versus collective trauma
~ Socio-cultural perspectives on traumatic experience
~ Gender
~ The body from the inside and out
~ Psychic trauma
5. Representing Trauma
~ Affect, trauma, and art
~ Trauma on stage, screen, and in cyberspace
~ Traumatic expression
~ Media images: reality and fiction
~ Literature and poetry
~ Eyewitness testimony
~ Gaming and violence
~ New technologies
~ Reporting on trauma
~ Aesthetics and experience
~ Fear and horror
~ Otherness, spirituality, and trauma
~ Affect, trauma, and art
~ Trauma on stage, screen, and in cyberspace
~ Traumatic expression
~ Media images: reality and fiction
~ Literature and poetry
~ Eyewitness testimony
~ Gaming and violence
~ New technologies
~ Reporting on trauma
~ Aesthetics and experience
~ Fear and horror
~ Otherness, spirituality, and trauma
What to Send
The Steering Group also welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 11th October 2013. All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 17th January 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
The Steering Group also welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 11th October 2013. All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 17th January 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract f) up to 10 key words
E-mails should be entitled: Trauma 4 Abstract Submission.
E-mails should be entitled: Trauma 4 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
This conference seeks to explore the boundaries of (re)production, not merely as physical birth but more broadly as a gateway which signals origins, indicates a process of continual bodily, sexual, cultural (and even viral) change and transitions, and which speaks of a future and futures possibly unknown.