[Ryan Calabretta-Sajder]

MLA Working Group
Transgenerational Trauma in Italian-American Literary, Visual, and Performative Texts
From the shellshock victims of the First World War to adopting the term posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), trauma studies cover a wide-ranging area, from psychiatry to transgenerational trauma. In The Traumatic Imagination, Eugene Arva contends that “traumatized…authors compulsively and constantly strive to find a voice (more often than not a proxy, such as a narrator and/or character) capable of expressing what is too terrifying to express, that horrible event which resists witnessing” (45). In literary, visual, and performative texts, Italian-American narrators and characters reveal traumatic events such as abortion, AIDS, child abuse, and/or death of a family member. This working group investigates how Italian-American authors (re)present trauma in their writing through the theoretical lens of trauma theory. The editors seek works dealing with fiction, memoir, poetry, or theater. Our goal is an edited collection with three chapters per genre. Please submit a 250-word abstract with a short bibliography with the theor(ies) one intends to use and a 250-word bio.Deadline for submissions: March 22
Contact: Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, calabret@uark.edu and Alan J. Gravano, alan.gravano@rm.edu

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