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FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS Postcolonial Traumas Conference Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent University 13th-14th September 2012 Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Patrick Williams, Nottingham Trent University Around the time of Frantz Fanon’s famous articulation in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) of the ‘massive psychoexistential complex’ created by colonisation, such writers as Octave Mannoni and Albert Memmi were also thinking about colonisation’s damaging psychological effects. In more recent years, the work of trauma theorists, including Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Marianne Hirsch, Dominick LaCapra and Dori Laub, has been both embraced and rejected by postcolonial theorists and critics. Whilst, for some, trauma theory has provided a helpful way of conceptualising the often painful and difficult legacies of colonialism, others have been all too aware of what Stef Craps and Gert Buelens (2008) have recognised as the ‘Eurocentric blind spots that trauma theory will have to confront if it is to have any hope of delivering on its promise of cross-cultural ethical engagement’. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to reflect on this promise and explore new ways of thinking about postcolonial trauma. Conference participants will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for an edited collection. Topics may include (but are not limited to): • Slavery and indenture • Colonial legacies • Neocolonial trauma • Apartheid • Genocides • Survival and resistance • Tourism and eco-trauma • Migration and displacement • Asylum • Witnessing and testifying • Memory and trauma • The ethics of trauma studies Please send 300-word abstracts and 50-word bios to Abigail Ward by Friday 13th April 2012: [log in to unmask]