Readings of Trauma

Trauma is a brief term for a complex phenomenon, a linguistic vessel for experiences that can hardly be put into speech. Its terminological vagueness has made the concept of trauma a permanent guest in discourses beyond the clinical context. This volume offers a scholarly reflection on the hermeneutical foundations of the concept of trauma: What do we mean by it? What different avenues of comprehension are open, given our varying cultural and linguistic backgrounds? And are we aware that understanding itself can be seen as an attempt to avoid trauma’s gravity? These questions were discussed during the DFG-funded international interdisciplinary conference “Readings of Trauma”, which took place in Marburg in April 2022 and brought together scholars from Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the USA and South Africa to compare their hermeneutical perspectives on biblical and modern trauma narratives through the lenses of theology, literature, psychology, and psychoanalysis.