Fall 2026 Colloquium: Catherine Liu

Traumatized: The New Politics of Personal Suffering

Thursday, September 10, 2026 4:30 PM EDT
The event will be livestreamed by GMU-TV

Catherine Liu is professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine and founder of the Palm Springs School for Social Research. Her research spans Sinophone cinema, the visual arts, French literature, psychoanalysis, and the Frankfurt School. She is best known for her critique of the professional-managerial class, Virtue Hoarders (2021).

Her latest book is Traumatized: The New Politics of Personal Suffering (2026).

Trauma culture speaks to our current moment: the demise of liberalism after the end of the cold war, the expansion of social media, and the rise of surveillance capitalism — a time when Americans suffer new and severe forms of economic uncertainty. Trauma culture promises delivery from social oppression but cannot deliver. Instead, it has weaponized individual suffering, undermined solidarity, and eviscerated the foundations of liberal politics by demanding submission to a regime of vulnerability and accommodation. When suffering is all we have in common, what are we to do when we are all too traumatized to resist?