The Things We Bring with Us

In a world of violent, traumatic, and tragic rituals, objects, and histories, three authors reckon with the ethics of moving forward. On this panel, Molly Farneth, Laura Levitt, and Karen Guth respond to one another's recent books. Each author has analyzed examples of dominating power and its effects in contemporary society. Each has found ways of describing a positive vision for communities responding to the tragedies and violent circumstances in which they are caught up. Drawing on work in feminist theory and religious studies on care, practice, and performance, Farneth, Levitt, and Guth will discuss the vivid examples that sparked their books, the similarities and differences in their disciplinary motives, and their answers to a pressing contemporary question: what will we—and what should we—bring with us from the past to a present in which tragedy, violence, and trauma remain?