This course will introduce students to advanced trauma theory and survey classics in the field, focusing on relevant psychoanalytic and social scientific theoretical works from Freud onward through critical social theory related to holocausts, genocides, illness, accident, sexual violence, and torture. Special attention will be given to the relation of the "historic" scenes of obliteration to modes of negativity in everyday life. While most primary texts will come from the U.S., theoretical and historical works will derive their arguments from a variety of geopolitical scenes. Some focus on graphic novels about trauma will also help focus the questions of mediation in the course.