Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

“Global Trauma is the voice of God calling to us.” (Langberg, 2011) Trauma, Langberg asserts, is perhaps the greatest mission field of the twenty-first century, remaining a place of enigma and urgency. The frequency and impact of trauma in our lives is no longer debated. In fact scholars now remind us that trauma has become a common feature of our contemporary lives whether we are speaking of genocidal violence or the dreary redundancy of sexual assaults. According to Dr. Diane Langberg, clinical psychologist and co-founder of A Place of Refuge, one in seven persons live with the searing mark of trauma. Given its normalcy, how can we create effective responses to the common presence of trauma in our public sphere in such a way to lessen its mark upon us and move forward into reparative strategies capable of carrying its immensity? Working from an interdisciplinary approach, I explore how scholars across the humanities represent a landscape of survival necessary for us to reclaim the luminescence of our shared humanity. Here we enter into what Mayra Rivera (2015) names the “generative capacities of the flesh,” binding us to wounds as spaces of possibility within redemptory reclamations.