The Invisibility of War Trauma: Mental Health, Violence, and Literature in Interwar Britain and Italy

This talk explores a largely overlooked literary figure of the First World War: the veteran who appears to have “come through” unscathed, returns to civilian life, and functions outwardly well, yet whose war damage re-emerges belatedly in acts of violence that are never recognised as consequences of the conflict. Rather than concentrating on visibly broken soldiers, it turns to apparently competent ex-servicemen whose destructiveness is systematically misread. Drawing on interwar literary texts from Britain and Italy, and combining historically informed close reading with a comparative analysis of scientific and socio-political discourses in both countries, the talk argues that these works become key sites for negotiating war trauma and violence. Through the figure of the invisibly damaged veteran, they test the limits of contemporary efforts to grasp the psychic afterlife of the war.

About the speaker

Stefano Serafini is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Padua. He received a PhD in comparative literature and cultures from Royal Holloway, University of London and held postdoctoral positions at the universities of Toronto and Warwick. He published extensively on the history of deviance and transgression in modern Britain and Italy at the intersection of literature, medicine, and criminal law. His MSCA project, conducted at the universities of Padua, Georgetown, and Hamburg, examines the transnational and trans-medial circulation of key discourses regarding mental health and violence that emerged in interwar Europe (1918–39).

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This hybrid event is free to attend. The virtual link will be shared on the day.

If you have any accessibility requirements, please get in touch with us at imh.events@durham.ac.uk.

This hybrid seminar is co-badged by the Institute for Medical Humanities' Violence, Trauma, and Memory Research Strand and the International Centre for Moral Injury.