Thomas Trezise in Conversation with André Benhaïm—Beginning Again
Thomas Trezise is joined in conversation with André Benhaïm. Beginning Again: A Spouse’s Story of Life after Trauma recounts the struggle to rebuild a life after trauma with emotional clarity and psychological insight.
Thomas Trezise, a professor of French, was working on a book one morning in southern France when his wife, on a walk in the surrounding countryside, was sexually assaulted and nearly murdered. Here Trezise revisits the challenges of supporting a survivor when his own life was forever changed by the event. He closely examines secondary trauma, in which grief, fear, and anger carry no clear public recognition and little permission to speak. While drawing attention to the overlooked distress of those who stand by survivors, he questions his own masculinity in a world where the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by men.
With emotional clarity and psychological insight, Beginning Again recounts the struggle to rebuild a life despite marital and social strains, professional turmoil, and the unfamiliarity of the French legal system. And it highlights how post-traumatic experience can change the very stories told to make sense of it, describing the author’s joy at becoming a father and his discovery, through the culture of Martinique and Guadeloupe, of a renewed relationship with France.
Thomas Trezise is Professor of French at Princeton University and author of Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony.
This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Department of French & Italian, Princeton’s Humanities Council, and Labyrinth Books.
Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.
Thomas Trezise, a professor of French, was working on a book one morning in southern France when his wife, on a walk in the surrounding countryside, was sexually assaulted and nearly murdered. Here Trezise revisits the challenges of supporting a survivor when his own life was forever changed by the event. He closely examines secondary trauma, in which grief, fear, and anger carry no clear public recognition and little permission to speak. While drawing attention to the overlooked distress of those who stand by survivors, he questions his own masculinity in a world where the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by men.
With emotional clarity and psychological insight, Beginning Again recounts the struggle to rebuild a life despite marital and social strains, professional turmoil, and the unfamiliarity of the French legal system. And it highlights how post-traumatic experience can change the very stories told to make sense of it, describing the author’s joy at becoming a father and his discovery, through the culture of Martinique and Guadeloupe, of a renewed relationship with France.
Thomas Trezise is Professor of French at Princeton University and author of Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony.
This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Department of French & Italian, Princeton’s Humanities Council, and Labyrinth Books.
Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.
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