This seminar examines how poetry creates forms of witnessing that engage with experiences of political violence beyond the limits of factual representation. Drawing on Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s theories of testimony, as well as Martha Nussbaum’s concept of moral imagination, we explore how poetic form transforms readers from passive observers into active participants in the process of ethical recognition. Rather than replacing journalism or legal testimony, poetry offers an alternative mode of engagement, one that emphasizes listening, responsibility, and the preservation of human complexity under pressure.

We invite papers that investigate how poetic techniques such as repetition, fragmentation, innovative imagery, and polyvocality communicate the emotional and psychological dimensions of trauma. We welcome comparative analyses of poets who confront displacement, identity erasure, and state violence, exemplified by figures such as Mahmoud Darwish, Warsan Shire, and Carolyn Forché, among others.

Ultimately, this seminar seeks to theorize poetry as an ethical encounter between speaker and reader that actively challenges emotional distance. Possible paper topics may include:

• The limits of legal and documentary frameworks in verse
• Lyric responses to carceral systems and border regimes
• The role of memory and testimony in transcultural and diasporic poetics
• Aesthetic strategies for representing collective moral inquiry