This document provides an agenda for an English writing class. It includes: 1. A writing workshop to provide feedback on Essay #2 drafts through a peer review exercise. 2. An introduction to trauma theory, covering its development over the last century across multiple disciplines in response to violence and loss in the 20th century. 3. Homework assigned, including further revising Essay #2, reading two texts on trauma theory, and posting a discussion question on the readings.

1. EWRT 1C
Class 20

2. AGENDA
 Writing Workshop:
Essay # 2
 You need two
copies of your
essay for this
exercise.
 Introduction to
Trauma Theory

3. Writers: On the back of the
drafts you brought for your
readers, answer these two
questions:
1. Purpose: Here is what I hope to
accomplish with my readers:
1. Problem: Here is what I see as the single
most important problem with this draft;
please keep this in mind as you read
through my paper:

4. Distributing your papers
Pass your papers to me. I will
pass them to readers so that
you get two responses to your
essay. When you complete your
first response, I will give you a
second essay to read. This will
ensure that each person gets at
least one complete review. The
goal is respond to the guideline
prompts without asking any
questions of the writer.

5. Directions
 Please read the writer’s answers
to the two questions we began
with.
 Please follow the guidelines on
the handout.
 Respond thoroughly, but keep in
mind that the goal is to respond
to two essays if you can.
 Return the essays to me your
comments when you finish.
 When you finish two essays, I
will return your essays with
comments. Read them and
consider the advice.

6. Trauma Theory

7. Trauma Theory: the last 100
years.
Trauma has attracted the
attention of many disciplines.
The reason is easy to
understand for those of us
today, who have the historical
knowledge of violence of the
twentieth century and the
experience of the ominous
start of twenty-first century.

8. A Century of
Traumas
The new millennium awakened to bloodshed of an
unprecedented scale on 9/11; two subsequent
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the enormous
loss of life and property in Libya and Syria threw
the world into turmoil.
Shoshana Felman, Emory University Professor
specializing in 19th and 20th literature and
psychoanalysis, trauma and testimony, literature
and philosophy, law and literature, calls the
legacy of violence we inherited from the
twentieth century “a century of traumas.”
This condition of the world has posed new
existential and epistemological questions to
human civilization, questions that trauma theory
is trying to make sense of and answer
Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the
Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.

9. Freudian Beginnings
Freudian Dreams
Freud referred to dreams as“the
royal road to a knowledge of the
unconscious activities of the
mind.” Dreaming, which,
according to Freud’s first
theories, happened distortedly or
symbolically, gives an outlet to
the dark desires repressed in the
unconscious or Id, so that sleep
is not disturbed by primitive
sexual and aggressive impulses
(Freud’s Interpretation of
Dreams).

10. Traumatic dreams vs. Freudian dreams
The World War I veterans
plagued with PTSD puzzled
Freud because the literal
images they encountered in
dreams could not be
explained in terms of the
dream theory he devised
earlier in The Interpretation
of Dreams.

11. The term trauma theory and
PTSD:
What Freud once called
“traumatic neurosis,” the
American Psychiatric
Association in 1980 officially
acknowledged and termed as
“Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder” (PTSD), a concept
significant to trauma theory.
The term “trauma theory” first
appears in Cathy Caruth’s
Unclaimed Experience (1996).
The theory stems from her
interpretation and elaboration
of Freud’s reflections on
traumatic experiences in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
and Moses and Monotheism.

12. HOMEWORK?
Again?
@#% !
Work on Essay #2: Due Sunday, week 8 at Noon
Read Bloom’s “Trauma Theory Abbreviated”
Read Balaev’s “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory”
Post # 17: QHQ Bloom or Balaev