Hidden Histories: Gender and Testimony (GEND20007)

This subject provides a general introduction to gender issues in relation to ideas about trauma and testimony. It is divided into two parts. The first part introduces students to different forms of gender related testimony through a series of topics including Archives, Art, Autobiography, Documentary, Histories, Legal Evidence, Museums, Monuments, and Photography. It involves considering material related to a number of historical events including the Holocaust and the Second Gulf War. Additionally it addresses themes such as herstory, masculinity, and sexuality. The second part, in the final four weeks, invites students to analyse a series of historical case studies for which a variety of ways of bearing witness exist and reflect on the appropriateness of these different media as forms of attestation to past events and also on the gender issues which are raised by these testimonies. The case studies are the life of Ned Kelly, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the persecution of the gay community in Nazi Germany, and the femicides of Cuidad Juárez. The subject will examine testimony as evidence about past events yet also push beyond such a conception addressing, for example, the phenomenological import some types of testimony can possess and also the possible cathartic potential of bearing witness to traumatic experiences. The subject is strongly informed by ideas from psychoanalysis and through close readings of key texts students will attain a basic grounding in major theories of testimony and trauma including those advanced by Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Dominick LaCapra, Dori Laub, and Hanna Segal. Students will therefore develop a critical vocabulary suitable for assessing diverse practices of gender-related memorialisation.