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This edited book focuses on the role of scholars in studying their own individual traumas, exploring the complex interplay between personal trauma and scholarly engagement. It gathers a diverse range of contributions, including an essay, seven articles and an insightful interview.
List of contents
Introduction: Wounded Scholar, Healing Witness
1. 'I Hope You and Your Loved Ones Remain Safe': Dispatch from a Teacher-Scholar-Life Writer in Wartime
2. Kinship in Darkness: On the Humanities' Intrinsic Potential to Foster Post-Traumatic Healing
3. On the Memory of Birds: A Meditation on Memory and Mourning AIDS Deaths in South Africa
4. Inventing Reality: An Integration of Autobiographical Fiction with Jungian Psychoanalysis to Negotiate a Personal Experience of Trauma
5. Between the Personal and the History: Writing a Biography in the First Person
6. Trauma and Healing through Postgenerational Holodomor Survivor Research
7. Torn Bodies: Inner Conflicts of Surviving Composers
8. Scriptotherapy: WW2 Shanghai Female Refugees' Memoirs
9. On Witnessing, the Responsibility of Transmitting, and the Healing Powers of Creativity. An Interview with the Jewish-Argentine Artist Mirta Kupferminc
About the author
Idit Gil is the academic director of the MA program of Interdisciplinary Democracy Studies at the Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, Israel. Specialising in Holocaust studies, her research focuses on the intricacies of history, memory, and societal and political dynamics. Her scholarly works about Jewish forced labour, survivor testimonies, and the complexities of Holocaust memory in Israeli society have been featured in publications such as
Lessons and Legacies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Yad Vashem Studies, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Modern Judaism, Israel Studies, and
ITS Jahrbuch. She is also the author of the book,
The Holocaust: Between the Personal and the History (2017 [Hebrew]).
Stefanie Hofer is Associate Professor of German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech, USA. She has published on contemporary German literature and cinematic depictions of Germany's struggle to come to terms with Nazi atrocities and leftwing terrorism. Her current research focuses on the role of autobiographical narratives in posttraumatic healing. Drawing from her own experiences after the murder of her husband during the 16 April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, USA, she argues that analysing literary and filmic depictions of loss and trauma across time and cultures can serve as a catharsis for grieving and, ultimately, provide a self-determined space for working through trauma. Her work has appeared in scholarly venues such as
American Imago, German Life and Letters, Film Criticism, Film International, Seminar, and
Women in German Yearbook.
