This paper examines the role of embodied memory in Ken Liu’s The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary, analyzing how corporeal testimony disrupts state-controlled narratives and complicates the politics of remembrance. Building upon the novella’s ethical dilemmas, this study explores how trauma is not merely archived but physically inscribed and re-experienced through sensory engagement. By foregrounding time travel as historical witnessing, this paper interrogates the epistemological and ethical implications of re-experiencing history through the body. Liu’s narrative transforms time travel into an embodied act of witnessing, where participants experience past atrocities as physical conduits of memory rather than detached observers. This raises questions about whether embodied testimonies strengthen historical accountability or risk appropriating trauma as a consumable spectacle.

The novella’s portrayal of physical aftereffects—visceral trauma, psychosomatic distress, and permanent physiological imprints—complicates the ethical stakes of embodied testimonies. By conceptualizing embodied memory not merely as a physiological response to trauma but as a form of historical inscription, Liu reframes the body as an active site of memory transmission. Unlike textual archives, which are subject to state manipulation, embodied memories exist beyond state-sanctioned historiography, making it both a radical alternative and a precarious form of testimony. By extending intergenerational trauma transmission beyond textual mediation, Liu reimagines history as something not only remembered but physically reinscribed.

Thereupon, Liu’s novella challenges Eurocentric models of historiography by rejecting the primacy of textual documentation in favor of embodied witnessing. Western historiography privileges written archives and nation-state frameworks, marginalizing non-Western histories, but Liu disrupts this paradigm by foregrounding sensory experience as a legitimate mode of historical validation. The text’s geopolitical conflict over historical truth—depicted through diplomatic struggles between China, Japan, and the United States—illustrates both the subversive power and the vulnerabilities of embodied testimony, as it challenges dominant memory structures while remaining susceptible to state appropriation.

By integrating literary analysis, trauma studies, and historiography, this study positions The Man Who Ended History as a key text in contemporary debates on historical representation, the materiality of memory, and the politics of remembrance. Ultimately, this paper argues that Liu’s novella advances an alternative epistemology that positions the body as an active medium of historical knowledge production. Through incorporating the limitations of archival memory and expanding discussions on embodied witnessing, this study offers a framework for rethinking historical accountability within memory studies, postcolonial historiography, and speculative fiction.

This paper interrogates the interplay between memory, remembering and forgetting, in the context of literary and visual narratives addressing the histories of “comfort women.” Drawing on the works of prominent scholars such as Marianne Hirsch’s ‘postmemory’ and Dominick LaCapra’s notions in “Trauma, Absence, Loss”, it examines how these narratives mediate the tension between the moral imperative to remember and the psychological and cultural desire to move beyond painful pasts. The analysis employs cognitive and affective frameworks, building on the insights of Alison Landsberg’s ‘prosthetic memory’ and Halbhwach’s ‘collective memory’ to explore how audiences are invited to engage with difficult histories, thereby challenging dominant societal narratives and fostering empathetic connections across temporal and cultural divides.

While much existing scholarship in this area parallels Holocaust studies, notably through Yael Danieli’s works on multigenerational legacies of trauma, the works of Saul Friedländer and James E. Young; this paper emphasizes an Asia-centric discourse, integrating theoretical perspectives from history, psychology, gender and memory studies to center the lived experiences of the “comfort women.” By doing so, it critiques and expands upon the Eurocentric paradigms often invoked in trauma studies. The study ultimately argues that the triangulation of remembering, forgetting, and reconciliation not only underscores the complexities of confronting historical injustices but also suggests a redemptive pathway for collective healing and justice. Through this, it seeks to establish a distinct foundation for further interdisciplinary inquiry into memory and gender within an Asian context.

Recent studies have explored how literature reflects the marginalization of queer identities in the society which places heterosexuality as a norm. Amruta Patil's graphic narrative Kari is such a canvas where the titular character's journey to self-discovery is painted against the swamped city of Mumbai. The society's deliberate act of subjugating the interests of queer identities is evident in Kari's interactions and experiences within the urban landscape. This landscape is characterized by a manufactured notion of gender identity, which the author deftly contrasts with Kari's gender fluidity. Kari, by deconstructing gender stereotypes and questioning traditional beliefs advocates for a space for the silenced voices of marginalized communities to be heard and considered. Cognizant of the vulnerable voices of queer communities disrupting the power hierarchies of society, Kari's divergence from what is considered as 'normal' can be studied from the lens of plurality. The othering of individuals deemed unconventional by power structures guarantees the definition and disintegration of the memories, histories, and narratives of resistance.

The graphic novel, as a visual-verbal genre, enables a multifaceted reading of the text, which is sensory and immersive, as the grammar and the imagination is given. The narrative structure of the graphic novel is itself subject to testimonial impulses as Hillary Chute suggests,"images in comics appear in fragments, just as they do in actual recollection; this fragmentation, in particular, is a prominent feature of traumatic memory" (Chute, p4). This sequential art form thus encourages the author and readers to engage with the narrative of abuse directed against the marginalized. This paper aims to understand the hegemony of standardization and homogenization of queer identities by looking at the narrative Kari as a graphic novel. By employing Hannah Arendt's philosophy of pluralism, the work will be studied for its representation of the vulnerable human body as a site for both struggle and resistance. The novel will also be analyzed for its distinct woman protagonist as providing an unprecedented syntax for representation of women characters in literature of the new era.

The ultimate goal of this research work is to make a comparative discussion between Krishan Chander’s Urdu short story “پشاور ایکسپریس” (Peshawar Express) (1948) and Syed Waliullah’s English short story “The Escape” (1950). Both stories depict the partition that took place in 1947, the journey of the refugees, deaths in riots, and violence against women. Besides sharing these common themes, they differ on some important points, such as Chander shows more violence than Waliullah, and Waliullah works more on refugee subjects' psyches than the narrative of violence. By using Benedict Anderson's and Ernest Renan's theories on nation and nationalism along with Judith Lewis Herman’s concept of “Complex PTSD” and Julian Ford and Courtois’s idea of complex trauma, this study employs a close reading of these two short stories and related theories on nationalism, partition, etc., as a methodology. The critical reading shows that Waliullah deals with the subject's psyche regarding the partition issue, while Chander's main focus is the presentation of the violence of the 1947 partition. Besides, both of them use trains as a symbol of not only the refugees' endless misfortune but also the process of alienation that happened between populations that lived together and struggled to decolonize their land. Moreover, Chander depicts collective struggle, whereas Waliullah depicts subjects’ PTSD to understand the effect of these brutal events on a refugee entity. All of these suggest that Waliullah's narrative is the extended and deepened version of Chander's work.