Springer Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture

This lofty volume analyzes a circular cultural relationship: not only how trauma is reflected in cultural processes and products, but also how trauma itself acts as a critical shaper of literature, the visual and performing arts, architecture, and religion and mythmaking. The political power of trauma is seen through US, Israeli, and Japanese art forms as they reflect varied roles of perpetrator, victim, and witness. Traumatic complexities are traced from spirituality to movement, philosophy to trauma theory. And essays on authors such as Kafka, Plath, and Cormac McCarthy examine how narrative can blur the boundaries of personal and collective experience. Among the topics covered:  Television: a traumatic culture. From Hiroshima to Fukushima: comics and animation as subversive agents of memory in Japan. The death of the witness in the era of testimony: Primo Levi and Georges Perec. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion. Placing collective trauma within its social context: the case of the 9/11 attacks. Killing the killer: rampage and gun rights as a syndrome. This volume appeals to multiple readerships including researchers and clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media researchers.   Review “The editors of this work, all of whom are experts in trauma and interdisciplinary studies, have compiled an exceptional collection of essays that explore how trauma is examined and revealed through popular culture, be it in film, television, art, or literature. … This volume is recommended for undergraduate and graduate students (particularly psychology and mass communication students), as well as researchers and faculty. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; researchers and faculty.” (E. Fisher, Choice, Vol. 54 (9), May, 2017) From the Back Cover This lofty volume analyzes a circular cultural relationship; it not only explores how trauma is reflected in cultural processes and products, but also how trauma itself can shape literature, visual and performing arts, architecture, religion, and mythmaking. Analyses of American, Israeli, and Japanese art forms reveal the power of trauma, as reflected in varying roles of perpetrator, victim, and witness. Traumatic complexities are traced through the consideration of spirituality, religion, movement, philosophy, psychology, and trauma theory. Additionally, essays on authors such as Kafka, Plath, and Cormac McCarthy examine how narrative can blur the boundaries of personal and collective experience. Among the topics covered:  Television: a traumatic culture. From Hiroshima to Fukushima: comics and animation as subversive agents of memory in Japan The difference between trauma and fear The death of the witness in the era of testimony: Primo Levi and Georges Perec. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion.Placing collective trauma within its social context: the case of the 9/11 attacks. Killing the killer: rampage and gun rights as a syndrome. This volume appeals to multiple readerships including researchers and clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media researchers.   About the Author Dr. David Gurevitz David Gurevitz is one of Israel’s most outstanding scholars in the field of cultural research. He heads the program in Media and Popular Culture in the School of Media Studies at the College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS) in Israel. Dr. Gurevitz has lectured at leading universities in Israel and abroad and spent two years as a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Gurevitz holds a Ph.D. degree, with honors, from Bar Ilan University, Israel. Among his key publications are “White Noise – Literature and Education in the Postmodern Era” and “Feminism and Postmodernism.” He completed his post-doctoral research at Harvard University. His prima