Multidisciplinary academic considerations that define the field of trauma studies are currently being shaped, expanded and redefined by various theoretical openings. As Dominick LaCapra comments: “No genre or discipline owns trauma as a problem or can provide definitive boundaries for it” (Writing History, Writing Trauma 96). For Cathy Caruth, one of the central figures in cultural trauma theory in the early 1990s, trauma is a crisis of narrative and representation, and of truth and history. Trauma theory is also an attempt to trace the different forms of human suffering and our responses to it.

This conference is about the influence of trauma both on individuals and on cultures and about the necessity to share and translate such traumatic affect. By concentrating on rhetorical, semiotic and social aspects, the conference aims to focus on the phenomenon of trauma and its different manifestations and to consider the elements that may generate the aporias of trauma and offer new possibilities for survival, recovery and healing. Therefore, the goal of this conference is to challenge the recent boundaries and assumptions of the field, encouraging new approaches for trauma studies.