609231 PS Critical Area Studies: British and Anglophone Cultures: War in the Time of Childhood: Child Soldiers in Fiction
summer semester 2024 | Last update: 06.12.2023 | Place course on memo listThe aim of this course is to familiarise students with the theory of trauma for the analysis of the experience child soldiers are forced to undergo. At the end of the semester students will be able to apply trauma theory to novels and films and documentaries in particular and give answers to how the rehabilitation process impacts on the child soldiers and their families.
Stories of child soldiers deal with war and its traumatizing experience. Referring to Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, Stonebridge claims, “identity begins with a trauma, a wound in the psyche of which we cannot speak, but upon which we nonetheless fixate in our imperfect memories, fictions, repetitions, and compulsions.” In the course we will analyse how war forces children to leave childhood behind and how violence, killing, and sexual abuse profoundly impact on their rehabilitation process. This process in most cases is a lengthy and challenging struggle to break a vicious circle, that of the bonding with supposed protectors and leaders.
group discussions, presentations, assignments
presentations, written paper
BA Teacher Training Programme: positive completion of compulsory module 16
BA 2015: positive completion of compulsory module 14
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