This book promotes a historically and culturally sensitive understanding of trauma during and after World War II. Focusing especially on Eastern and Central Europe, its contributors take a fresh look at the experiences of violence and loss in 1939-45 and their long-term effects in different cultures and societies. The chapters analyze traumatic experiences among soldiers and civilians alike and expand the study of traumatic violence beyond psychiatric discourses and treatments. While acknowledging the problems of applying a present-day medical concept to the past, this book makes a case for a cultural, social and historical study of trauma. Moving the focus of historical trauma studies from World War I to World War II and from Western Europe to the east, it breaks new ground and helps to explain the troublesome politics of memory and trauma in post-1945 Europe all the way to the present day. This book is an outcome of a workshop project 'Historical Trauma Studies,' funded by the Joint Committee for the Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) in 2018-20. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This collection investigates the social and cultural history of trauma to offer a comparative analysis of its individual, communal, and political effects in the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to witness testimony, to procedures of personal memory and collective commemoration, and to visual sources as they illuminate the changing historical nature of trauma. The essays draw on diverse methodologies, including oral history, and use varied sources such as literature, film and the broadcast media. The contributions discuss imaginative, communal and political responses, as well as the ways in which the later welfare of traumatized individuals is shaped by medical, military, and civilian institutions. Incorporating innovative methodologies and offering a thorough evaluation of current research, the book shows new directions in historical trauma studies.

This transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis moves beyond the existing histories of medical theory, welfare, and symptomatology. The essays explore the personal traumas of soldiers and civilians in the wake of the First World War; they also discuss how memory and representations of trauma are transmitted between patients, doctors and families across generations. The book argues that so far the traumatic effects of the war have been substantially underestimated. Trauma was shaped by gender, politics, and personality. To uncover the varied forms of trauma ignored by medical and political authorities, this volume draws on diverse sources, such as family archives and narratives by children of traumatized men, documents from film and photography, memoirs by soldiers and civilians. This innovative study challenges us to re-examine our approach to the complex psychological effects of the First World War.

This transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis moves beyond the existing histories of medical theory, welfare, and symptomatology. The essays explore the personal traumas of soldiers and civilians in the wake of the First World War; they also discuss how memory and representations of trauma are transmitted between patients, doctors and families across generations. The book argues that so far the traumatic effects of the war have been substantially underestimated. Trauma was shaped by gender, politics, and personality. To uncover the varied forms of trauma ignored by medical and political authorities, this volume draws on diverse sources, such as family archives and narratives by children of traumatized men, documents from film and photography, memoirs by soldiers and civilians. This innovative study challenges us to re-examine our approach to the complex psychological effects of the First World War.

This collection investigates the social and cultural history of trauma to offer a comparative analysis of its individual, communal, and political effects in the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to witness testimony, to procedures of personal memory and collective commemoration, and to visual sources as they illuminate the changing historical nature of trauma. The essays draw on diverse methodologies, including oral history, and use varied sources such as literature, film and the broadcast media. The contributions discuss imaginative, communal and political responses, as well as the ways in which the later welfare of traumatized individuals is shaped by medical, military, and civilian institutions. Incorporating innovative methodologies and offering a thorough evaluation of current research, the book shows new directions in historical trauma studies.

The British Migrant Experience 1700-2000 is a wide-ranging collection of first person accounts together with introductory essays, capturing varied aspects of the British migrant story from the eighteenth to the 20th century. Building on recent interest in the social, psychological and historical aspects of population movement within and into mainland Britain, this anthology contributes to the current debate on British national identities, and introduces readers to aspects of imperial and colonial history, the history of autobiography and self-narration, and post-colonial literature.

This book promotes a historically and culturally sensitive understanding of trauma during and after World War II. Focusing especially on Eastern and Central Europe, its contributors take a fresh look at the experiences of violence and loss in 1939-45 and their long-term effects in different cultures and societies. The chapters analyze traumatic experiences among soldiers and civilians alike and expand the study of traumatic violence beyond psychiatric discourses and treatments. While acknowledging the problems of applying a present-day medical concept to the past, this book makes a case for a cultural, social and historical study of trauma. Moving the focus of historical trauma studies from World War I to World War II and from Western Europe to the east, it breaks new ground and helps to explain the troublesome politics of memory and trauma in post-1945 Europe all the way to the present day. This book is an outcome of a workshop project 'Historical Trauma Studies,' funded by the Joint Committee for the Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) in 2018-20. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Migrant Representations pairs twenty-four carefully selected histories in order to compare how migrants themselves - Irish labourer, Lithuanian refugee or Indian doctor - and their social investigators capture in words and images defining private and historical moments. These comparative case studies from the 1780s to the 2000s explore how migrants constructed their own narratives of mobility and settlement through procedures of reflecting, remembering and recording. Moreover, these studies examine how speech, writing, and picture were used, for instance, by a missionary, social scientist or activist to make 'outside' representations of the migrant. Such life-stories, social surveys, and pictures emerge as alternative archives. Leese's transnational, cultural history considers life-story forms and their uses; the tension between external surveillance and self-observation; the power of narratives to afford legibility and acknowledgement. Leese argues that, historically and in the present, first-person migrant stories and outsider investigations create a continuous charged exchange of views where both migrant and observer negotiate position, authority, authenticity, and potential advantage. Within the history of migrant representations this exchange generates a persistent, subversive strain of opposition and critique. Such self-observations, observations of others, and images never settle.

This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights. Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa - striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures.