Memory, Trauma, Asia

Rahul K. Gairola, PhD (University of Washington, USA) is The Krishna Somers Senior Lecturer in English & Postcolonial Literature and a Fellow of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University in Greater Perth, Western Australia. He is co-editor and author/co-author of five books including South Asian Digital Humanities: Postcolonial Mediations across Technology's Cultural Canon (London: Routledge, 2020); Migration, Gender and Home Economics in Rural North India (New Delhi: Taylor & Francis, 2019); and Homelandings: Postcolonial Diasporas and Transatlantic Belonging (London & New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). He is co-editor of special issues of Journal of Postcolonial Writing, South Asian Review, and Asiascape: Digital Asia, and previously taught at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India; The City University of New York, and Seattle University, USA. He is a lifetime member of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK. Sharanya Jayawickrama, PhD (University of Cambridge, UK) was Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong. She was previously Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Macau and Lecturer in Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. She was moreover an adjunct lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and King’s College, University of London, UK. Her published essays include field-shaping examinations of race, gender, and sexuality in Sri Lankan literature and culture. She passed away in September 2019.

1. The “Asian Pandemic”: Re-Thinking Memory and Trauma in Cultural Narratives of Asia Today (Rahul K Gairola and Sharanya Jayawickrama) Part I: Activating Memory as Personal Testimony 2. The Language of Trauma in Selected Short Stories by Gao Xingjian (Michael Ka-chi Cheuk) 3. Exorcising the Yellow Perils Within: Internment Trauma and Memory in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and John Okada’s No Boy (Kerry S. Kumabe) 4. Healing from the Khmer Rouge Genocide by “telling the world”: Active Subjectivity and Collective Memory in Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father (Nelly Mok) 5. Forgiving But Not Forgetting in The Garden of Evening Mists (Zhu Ying) Part II: Traumascapes of Body and State 6. Bonds and Companionship: the Healing Efficacy of the Picture Books of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (Michelle Chan) 7. Tyrants, Typhoons, and Trauma: Spectrality and Magic Realism in Nick Joaquin’s Cave and Shadows (Jocelyn Martin) 8. Engendering Islam: Religio-Cultural Violence and Trauma in Qaisra Shahraz’s The Holy Woman (Elham Fatma, Rahul K Gairola, and Rashmi Gaur) 9. Transgenerational Hauntings in the landscape of Okinawa, Japan: Medoruma Shun’s “Army Messenger” (Kyle Ikeda)