“Trauma has become a major signifier of our age,” Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman declared in Empire of Trauma. Nowhere is this more evident than in Eastern Europe and former Soviet states. Trauma permeates the region: in social relations, politics, historical memory, national identity, geopolitics, and war. Moreover, scholars have increasingly turned to trauma as a social-historical manifestation and analytic.
REEES Fall 2022 series, The Specter in the Present: Trauma and its Legacies in Eurasia, will explore the place of trauma in Eurasia society in four interviews that pair scholars to discuss social and clinical trauma, victimhood, historical memory, and the politics of history in the region.
All events in this series will be held online.
Thursday, September 29
Working Through Stalinism
10:00 am – 11:30 am EDT
A Live Interview with Polly Jones, Oxford University AND Zuzanna Bogumil, Polish Academy of Sciences
Thursday , October 13
Between Memory and History in Ukraine
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT
A LIVE INTERVIEW WITH Victoria Smolkina, Wesleyan University AND Georgiy Kasianov, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University
Tuesday, November 15
Mental Health on the Frontline in Ukraine
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT
A Live Interview with Alex Dombrovski, University of Pittsburgh AND Carmen Andreescu, University of Pittsburgh