Call for papers Vol. 4 No. 2 (2025) – Trauma Literature and the Reader: A Cognitive Poetics Approach

The relationship between literature and trauma has been a rich field of discussion over the past thirty years. Literary research has focused on how trauma is expressed and transformed through narrative techniques in particular. However, the reader’s role in processing and understanding trauma narratives remains a critical yet often underexplored area. This CfP seeks to address this gap by examining how readers engage with, interpret, and are affected by literary depictions of trauma, using the tools of cognitive poetics.

According to Cathy Caruth’s well-known definition, trauma provokes an epistemological crisis and bypasses linguistic references. Paradoxically, trauma is therefore experienced only belatedly through representation in the form of traumatic effects which literally represent the traumatic event. Literature thus becomes a privileged site for witnessing trauma through innovative literary forms that mimic and transmit the phenomenon to readers, rather than representing it in its literal form (Caruth 1996). Classical trauma theory has been shaped by psychoanalysis, deconstructionist literary theory, and the Holocaust as a defining historical trauma. However, the debate around the possibility of transmitting trauma through texts is ongoing. The concept of “empathic unsettlement,” where texts facilitate a feeling for traumatic experiences while maintaining critical distance, highlights the active role of the reader in the creation of meaning. It acknowledges the potential for readers to experience “secondary trauma,” as well as the need to avoid voyeurism and appropriation (LaCapra 2001, 102). Literary and cultural critics also raise ethical concerns about the potential for trauma narratives to become forms of “voyeuristic and arrogant spectatorship” (Sontag 2003, 9). Psychologists and neuroscientists continue to refine our understanding of trauma, emphasizing that much remains to be learned about how the brain and body process emotional pain (Pederson 2020). These evolving insights have the potential to transform how literary scholars approach and interpret depictions of trauma in literature.

In this special issue on Cognitive Poetic Approaches to Trauma Literature, we aim to focus on the reader’s involvement in trauma literature. Cognitive poetics provides a framework for understanding how readers process literary texts by examining the cognitive and affective mechanisms that mediate our understanding. We invite submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How do cognitive and emotional responses shape the reader’s role as a witness to trauma? What ethical considerations emerge in engaging with traumatic narratives?
• How do literary texts employ disnarration, temporal distortions, or spatial and ontological disruptions to convey trauma? What is the impact of these techniques on readers?
• How do trauma narratives evoke bodily responses or mirror traumatic experiences in readers? What insights can cognitive literary studies offer about the processing of trauma in literature?
• How can trauma literature address contemporary or less historically delineated forms of trauma? What relevance do these narratives hold for broader cultural and psychological contexts?
• How do testimonial, fictional, and visual media intersect in their representation of trauma? How do multimodal approaches enrich our understanding of traumatic experiences?

Submission Guidelines

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words, along with a brief bio, by 31 March. Full papers of 5000-7000 words will be due by 30 September. Submissions should be original, unpublished work in English. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches and encourage analyses of a wide range of literary and media forms, including but not limited to novels, poetry, drama, film, and graphic narratives.

Key Texts for Reference:

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Caruth, Cathy. 1995. Trauma : Explorations in Memory. Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience : Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Craps, Stef, Bryan Cheyette, Alan Gibbs, Sonya Andermahr, and Larissa Allwork. 2015. “Decolonizing Trauma Studies Round-Table Discussion.” Humanities (Basel) 4 (4): 905–23. https://doi.org/10.3390/h4040905.

Davis, Colin, Hanna Meretoja, Colin Davis, and Hanna Meretoja. 2020. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. 1st edition. Oxford: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351025225.

Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony : Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge.

LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Pederson, Joshua. 2014. “Speak Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma Theory.” Narrative 22 (3): 333-53.

Pederson, Joshua. 2020. “Cognitive Approaches to Trauma and Literature.” In Davis and Meretoja 2020, 277-87.

Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.