Nora Parr holds a PhD from SOAS, a monograph from her previous project on the shape of imagined national community in Palestinian fiction Nation Constellation, is forthcoming. She has taught at SOAS, University of Birmingham, King's College London and Bethlehem University.

‘What is the Arabic for ‘Trauma’? traces the emergence of a unique paradigm for the recounting of violence that is distinct from but in conversation with existing trauma theory. Looking at Palestinian and related Arabic literature (from c.1900-present), the project places trauma theory in context. It examines the limitations of theory, which is built to understand a specific and contextual phenomenon and probes the dangers of exporting theory without attention to what is being replaced or displaced. At the same time, the project aims to recover methods of ‘trauma’ telling from modern Arabic texts, ultimately providing a key example of the complex interactions of traveling terms. Working closely with the database of the ERC-funded PalREAD project, ‘What is the Arabic for Trauma’ will produce some of the first theorization based on an expanded corpus of Palestinian texts. Through this, it reads a model of trauma-based on its representation in Palestinian texts and forges an alternative understanding of a figure of thought that finally renders other types of trauma visible.