Critical Theory and Narrative Limits: Reading Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller

This two-lesson module introduces Master 2 students in Anglophone Literature and Civilizations to two of the most significant critical frameworks in contemporary literary studies: Cathy Caruth's trauma theory and Gayatri Spivak's postcolonial theory. Through close reading of Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman as a central case study, students will learn to use these frameworks as analytical tools — not to describe what a text is about, but to argue how it works and why it matters.