Students’ research. The transmission of trauma in the work of post-exile generations: an analysis of the novel “Sibiro haiku” and documentary film “Gyveno senelis ir bobutė”

Project idea

The main aim of the project is to develop the student's scientific competencies by implementing research on how the memory and cultural trauma of the people who were deported from Lithuania in 1940-1953 is mediated in the works of the later (second and third) post-memory generations. The research analyses two pieces by the post-memory generations – the children's graphic novel "Sibiro haiku" by J. Vilė and L. Itagaki and the documentary film "Gyveno senelis ir bobutė" by G. Beinoriūtė, by looking at these products of cultural memory as a lens through which the phenomenon of cultural/collective trauma can be perceived. The research and its results are relevant at the international level by studying the works of post-memory generations of deportation from relatively new theoretical perspectives of post-memory and cultural trauma and by applying them in the context of memory studies in Lithuania. They are also applicable at the national level by attempting to understand how the mediation of collective trauma through cultural products enables the descendants of deportees to make sense of their family history and expand the wider society's perception of the effects of the deportation in Lithuania.