Trauma studies in a post-war and post-transition society are very relevant and included in the National Recovery and Resilience Program as they help raise awareness and process repressed traumatic experiences. Knowledge about the devastating effects of repressed trauma and the inappropriate representations and ideological manipulations of trauma that are inscribed in the permanent memory of the individual and collective and a critical approach to the cultural semiosis of trauma, is an aid to the prevention of secondary traumatization (transgenerational trauma) and the repetition of traumatic events. By investigating representations of trauma in literature and new media, this project will contribute to the understanding of the narrativization, stylization, symbolization and memorialization of trauma as a literary and cultural trope and the role of the media in the sociocultural transmission and interpretation of trauma. It will achieve its social goals by applying the results in public educational activities, by cooperating with external cultural and educational institutions, and in university teaching, supporting the development of a culture of empathy as an imperative for the development of a healthy society.

The methodology is based on contemporary literary theories and their application in new media: trauma theory, representational theory, postclassical narratology (affective narratology, transmedia narratology), the semiotics of literature and new media, and cognitive-constructivist and cultural approaches to emotions. Contributions are expected on the poetological level (the discursivisation of trauma in prose, poetry, and drama, as well as the poetics of war and post-war provenance), genre (traumatic experience as a constituent of confessional poetry, anti-political and anti-war literature, trauma novels), medial (representation of trauma in video games and film) and comparative (Croatian, Slovenian, Bosnian-Herzegovinian, Polish, and American literature).