Is it possible to write the self without also always narrating trauma? Is it actually possible to write the self at all? Writing a biography or even an autobiography or memoir has an implication of authority, of expertise. This kind of writing often stakes a claim of ownership, and in the worst cases can even attempts to colonize the self or the other. In best case scenarios, the writer explicitly acknowledges the limits of what they are doing. In worst case scenarios, an autobiography, and even a biography becomes a deeply narcissistic project. What happens when these complications around biography and autobiography are combined with the experience of deep, ongoing trauma? This panel seeks contributions that examine these questions particularly in the light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the oppression of the Roma people throughout Eastern Europe, the growing anti-immigrant, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ+ movements, as well as the exceedingly urgent attempts at Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung (coping with the past) honoring the last living survivors of the Holocaust.

Possible, albeit not exhaustive themes are:
-testimonial writing in Central and Eastern Europe
-prison memoirs
-memory and nostalgia
-trauma as the failure of the human (the post- and anti- human)
-the monstrous
-biography/autobiography/antibiography
-rewriting history/anti-history
-narrative (im)possibility
-silence