Erasmus Society Lecture: Amy Hollywood, Jan. 27, 2014

Erasmus Society Lecture Series: "The Mystery of Trauma, and The Mystery of Joy" by Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School.

The Mystery of Trauma, the Mystery of Joy
The turn of the 21st century was full of talk about trauma, its simultaneous unspeakability and realness. In this talk, I will ask why we are so interested in trauma and why we often insist that traumatic events have a kind of reality and intensity absent from everyday experience. Horrified fascination with trauma also effects the ways in which we write history, including the history of the Middle Ages. I want to explore why this might be the case and how we might respond to other aspects of medieval religious texts, those in which the primary affect is not horror but rather joy.