Honors Collegium 149
Art and Trauma
Enrollment: Open to College Honors/College Scholars students
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Examination of how slavery, war, psychiatric institutionalization, and child sexual abuse shaped singular artistic visions. Depictions of severe trauma can be expressed in several ways–external event (e.g., war), internal psychological process (e.g., depression), or symbolic unfolding (e.g., disintegration of individual). Manner in which trauma is embedded in brain and stored in memory is also critical. Exploration of research on memory and trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and how severe trauma impacts brain. Studio component in form of individual and group projects to offer more tangible insight into process of art and trauma.
Professor Paul Abramson
Paul R. Abramson, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at UCLA. He is the author of 11 books, published by the likes of Oxford University Press, MIT Press, University of Chicago Press, New York University Press, and W.W. Norton. Paul is also the lead singer and lyricist of the band Crying 4 Kafka.
Professor Tania Abramson
Tania L. Abramson, MFA, is a conceptually focused visual artist, lecturer, writer, and performer. Co-creator and co-instructor of the UCLA Honor’s Collegium Art & Trauma seminar course, she also created its sequel, the UCLA Honor’s Collegium Feminism, Art and Metaphors of Trauma, which she co-taught in the winter of 2021. Ms. Abramson lectures widely in both the United States and internationally and is the author of numerous scholarly articles and several artbooks. The first, Shame and the Eternal Abyss, explores the dual experiences of shame and dissociation through her art and poetic commentary. She then produced two small volumes, Truth Lies and Concern, both part of an ongoing series of books loosely tied together by ambiguous words and experiences. Each are obliquely crafted narratives in drawings, photographs and poetic structure, that emanate from personal stories, yet enigmatically transcend to the universal. Ms. Abramson is currently working on a book chapter on Art & Trauma for Oxford University Press, and a graphic memoir that combines drawings, poetry and prose. She is also the Art Editor of the poetry and art journal BREATHE.
Q & A
What is your home department at UCLA? Psychology (Paul) and Honors Collegium (Tania)
How long have you been teaching your HC seminar? This is the first time we will be teaching the class Feminism, Art & The Metaphors of Trauma. The inspiration for this class was three-fold. First, once we created Art & Trauma 149. it quickly became apparent to us that the vast, but rarely scrutinized, literatures on global and historical artistic visions that emerged in the aftermath of trauma could never be adequately summarized in a 10-week seminar class. Though in fact we ultimately envisioned a multidisciplinary department devoted to this subject matter, for practical purposes we decided, as a first step, to devote our attention to creating a sequel to Art & Trauma 149. Our second inspiration was to put a priority on content that was especially neglected in this field. Finally, our last inspiration came when the journal Feminist Studies published Tania Abramson’s essay Unchain My Anguish: A Feminist Take on Art and Trauma. Praise for the latter, combined with the former inspirations, were collectively our impetus for creating the class Feminism, Art & the Metaphors of Trauma.
What do you find to be the most compelling about the subject matter of this seminar? What we have found most compelling about creating this new class was the discovery of so many global and historic textual and symbolic layers to feminist artistic visions that emerged in the aftermath of trauma, especially the allusive patterns and metaphors that were so intricately subtle, or even conversely, so patently forthright.
What are the learning objectives for this course?
- Use critical thinking and intellectual rigor to evaluate feminist artworks that affectingly integrate severely traumatic experiences.
- Comprehend the broader social, historical, cultural, and psychological implications of how feminist artistic imaginations encumbered by adversity are nonetheless essential to how art and feminism are understood.
- Contemplate how art can be a metaphorical language that is both expressive and dynamic.
- Appreciate how feminist artworks that are anchored in severe trauma serve as ethical imperatives for cognizance and reflection.
- Understand how feminist artists who express the appalling torments of severe trauma in their artworks are also inevitably creating tributes to autonomy, defiance, and resilience.