The seminar deals with social traumas that result from oppression: sexism, homophobia, racism and their impact on the formation of subjectivity. Social trauma, melancholy and shame will be explored in the context of the psychoanalytic, feminist, post-colonial and queer discourses. Thus, the seminar focuses on the attempt to develop a conceptual paradigm for thinking of social oppression in terms of trauma. Reading materials include texts by Marta Nussbaum, Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Kelly Oliver, Ann Cvetkovich, Giorgio Agamben, Eve Sedgwick and others.