Tracing the Traumatic Graduate Colloquium on Trauma in Ancient Theater

The aim of this colloquium is to investigate the interplay between the categories of ‘trauma’ and ‘emotion’ in the study of ancient Greek and Latin theater and reception, and how these two analytical lenses intersect, diverge, and can be mutually illuminating. ‘Trauma’ is a contested concept, ‘emotion’ no less so, and it is our intent to explore how the methods, theories, and insights from work done in both fields can enrich our understanding of ‘the traumatic,’ and ‘emotion.’

“Not all violence and suffering are best described by trauma,” writes Michael Rothberg, quoted in Erika Weiberg’s 2024 volume on trauma in Greek tragedy. In recent years, the popular usage of the term has led many clinical experts to question how we delimit what counts as ‘trauma.’ At the same time, the critical utility of the trauma framework has produced a growing body of scholarship on trauma in Greek and Latin literature, where scholars have re-framed narratives of pain and suffering, acknowledging a greater intensity of experience, or explaining severe shifts in characters’ psychological and emotional states. The literary study of trauma both benefits from and is challenged by cross-pollination from the clinical field, in which the concept of ‘trauma’ is also one constantly in flux and development. The persistent reimagining of the concept is not without its risks; sketching the outlines of ‘trauma’ risks erasing experiences outside its borders, while too broad a definition risks diluting the significance granted to truly extreme psychological wounds. Further, it is an open question whether ‘trauma’ is something that can be systematically theorized, or something that requires a pluralistic interpretative model that allows for variation, specificity, and difference. The study of trauma in ancient literature adds a further complicating element through the distant context, and the risks of anachronism. Research into the conception, representation, and evaluation of emotions in antiquity has grown into a robust sub-field of Classics in the past thirty years, following an interdisciplinary trend of argumentation that posits emotional experiences as, at least in part, socio-cultural constructs. The benefits of studying emotional “episodes” as content-bearing, contextualized phenomena, is newfound insight into the specific social situations and relational configurations that catalyze or even prescribe certain feelings or emotional displays, an analysis that can illuminate communal values, interpersonal norms, and even ethical customs.

Using tools developed by scholars working on the history of emotions, methods of analysis beyond the lexicological, we aim to reassess and reframe the discourse of trauma within the realm of the ancient Mediterranean. With a focus on trauma in ancient drama and its reception, we will address questions such as: What are the boundaries between trauma and emotion? What is their causal relationship? What are the challenges in applying theories from each field in the study of ancient literature, and how do they add to our understanding of ancient works? How can insights gleaned from research in our field enrich discussions of ‘trauma’ across disciplines? Can one develop a systematic ‘theory of trauma,’ or ought we employ a pluralistic framework, stressing the variation, specificity, and difference of experience across time and culture?