The Trauma Towers: Dimensions of Trauma in 9/11 Literature

The topic of this dissertation is the aspects of trauma and reaction to the traumatic experience that can be found in 9/11 literature. The research engages in a comparative analysis of five books that can be categorised as 9/11 literature, which means that the events of 9/11 are central in the novels and are a recurrent theme. The books have been written by authors of different nationalities: "Extremely Loud & Incredibily Close" by J. S. Foer, "Falling Man" by D. DeLillo, "Windows on the World" by F. Beigbeder, "Saturday" by I. McEwan and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by M. Hamid. The characters have either experienced the attacks personally or their lives have been largely influenced by the event. In either case, the protagonist has been traumatised by the tragedy. Therefore, in this study two different fields are fused together – the field of comparative literature and that of trauma studies.

One-loop quantum gravity in arbitrary dimensions

In the context of perturbative quantum gravity, the first three Seeley-DeWitt coefficients represent the counterterms needed to renormalize the graviton one-loop effective action in $D=4$ dimensions. A standard procedure to compute them is by means of the traditional heat kernel method. However, these coefficients can be studied also from a first quantization perspective through the so-called $\mathcal{N} = 4$ spinning particle model. It relies on four supersymmetries on the worldline and a set of worldline gauge invariances. In the present work, a different worldline model, able to reproduce correctly the Seeley-DeWitt coefficients in arbitrary dimensions, is developed. After a covariant gauge-fixing procedure of the Einstein-Hilbert action with cosmological constant, a worldline representation of the kinetic operators identified by its quadratic approximation is found. This quantum mechanical representation can be presented in different but equivalent forms. Some of these different forms are discussed and their equivalence is verified by deriving the gauge invariant counterterms needed to renormalize quantum gravity with cosmological constant at one-loop.