Ideological Battlegrounds Constructions Of Us And Them Before And After 9 11

Volume 2 of Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 continues and complements the discussion of the event undertaken in the first part of the two-volume publication (2014). This time, the focus is put on language and discourse. The contributions here volume explore the construction of “Us” and “Them” in a variety of pre- and post-9/11 texts, mainly from the perspectives of (political) discourse analysis and translation studies. The book shows how language in use reflects and retells the tragic event and how it (re-)constructs its actors, bringing us closer to understanding the roots and long-term consequences of 9/11. The volume is by no means exhaustive of the topic, but demonstrates its complexity and continuing relevance for today’s world.

“The effects of 9/11 ramify through a network of conduits and pathways, including the examples of expressive culture this volume explores; and the registration of those effects will likewise be felt in an array of documents and texts. The cultural, literary, and mass mediated effects of 9/11 encompass the globe and the chapters in this volume assume a transnational and international range of vantage points. The topics examined include the representation of Islam and Moslems in a number of texts and genres, the political and psychological dilemmas faced by characters in a number of literary works, and the refraction of current psycho-cultural-political tensions in forms of expressive culture in which the effects of 9/11 are felt in other than explicit ways. Was 9/11 a moment that punctuated and disrupted the movement of history or, as one of the authors suggests, did it act as a catalyst to escalate existing stereotypes? The chapters investigate not just different genres and cultural forms but distinct modes of intersection between the political, the cultural and the psychological. One achievement of this volume is to show how 9/11’s effects at times insinuate themselves in discourse through nuance and subtlety, and at other times frontally assault texts and images. In the words of one article, “modern Dutch post-9/11 novels directly participate in current cultural and political discourses.” By the same token, these cultural and political discourses participate in novels, films, TV shows, and the effects of 9/11 proliferate and concentrate in this exchange. This volume draws timely attention to the multiple forms of this complex interaction.” Dr Patrick Hagopian, University of Lancaster

"Volume 2 of Ideological Battlegrounds - Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 continues and complements the discussion of the event undertaken in the first part of the two-volume publication (2014). This time, the focus is put on language and discourse. The contributions here volume explore the construction of "Us" and "Them" in a variety of pre- and post-9/11 texts, mainly from the perspectives of (political) discourse analysis and translation studies. The book shows how language in use reflects and retells the tragic event and how it (re-)constructs its actors, bringing us closer to understanding the roots and long-term consequences of 9/11. The volume is by no means exhaustive of the topic, but demonstrates its complexity and continuing relevance for today's world."

This volume investigates the perception of threat, with particular regard to the roles, functions, and agencies of various types of media. With a focus on the profound impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 on the US-American political, social, and cultural order, the chapters reach from the early days after the attacks up to the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump. An international team of contributors analyze how the perceived threats and their subsequent representations changed during this period and what part different forms of media - media institutions, media technologies, and media formats - played within these transformations. Media theoretical perspectives are thus combined with historical approaches to examine the "re-ordering" of the nation, the state, and society proposed in an increasingly converging, multimodal, and networked media environment. This book’s focus on the interrelation between Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and American Studies makes it an indispensable landmark for fields such as Historical Research, Media Theory, Narratology, and Popular Culture Studies.

Drawing on theories of historiography, memory, and diaspora, as well as from existing genre studies, this book explores why contemporary writers are so fascinated with history. Pei-chen Liao considers how fiction contributes to the making and remaking of the transnational history of the U.S. by thinking beyond and before 9/11, investigating how the dynamics of memory, as well as the emergent present, influences readers’ reception of historical fiction and alternate history fiction and their interpretation of the past. Set against the historical backdrop of WWII, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror, the novels under discussion tell Jewish, Japanese, white American, African, Muslim, and Native Americans’ stories of trauma and survival. As a means to transmit memories of past events, these novels demonstrate how multidirectional memory can be not only collective but connective, as exemplified by the echoes that post-9/11 readers hear between different histories of violence that the novels chronicle, as well as between the past and the present.

Neighbourly relations frequently position a “self” against an “Other”. This is the case for both individuals and nations, and, indeed, within the various cultural groups of a nation. Our racial, ethnic, social, or gender identities are often created in demarcating ourselves by stereotyping the Other. Disrespect of the immediate neighbour based on stereotypical pre-conceptions and cultural biases may lie dormant for a long time and then, as shown in recent conflicts around the globe, suddenly surface due to changed economic and political conditions. Media, including films and fictional as well as non-fictional texts, feature prominently in producing, propagating, and maintaining cultural difference and stereotypes in ideologically effective ways. This volume analyses re-presentations from various angles, as it comprises articles dealing with ethnic groups and neighbo(u)rhoods from three world areas, as well as genres and media instrumental to their respective cultural stereotyping. This focus on literary and media representations of the neighbo(u)rly Other from miscellaneous cultural environments results in a comprehensive understanding of analogies and differences in the mechanisms of production and perception of stereotypes. Addressing the manifold discourses at the heart of stereotyping the familiar Other, the book also points to their far-reaching repercussions on lived cultural practices.

From his first book publication in 1958, the American writer John Updike attracted an international readership. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages, and he has always had a strong following in the United Kingdom and in Europe. Although Updike died in 2009, interest in his work remains strong among European scholars. No recent volume, however, collects diverse European views on Updike's oeuvre. The current book fills that void, presenting essays that perceive Updike's renditions of America through the eyes of scholar/readers from both Western and Eastern Europe--back cover.

Fantastic fiction is traditionally understood as Western genre literature such as fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Expanding on this understanding, these essays explore how the fantastic has been used in Western societies since the Middle Ages as a tool for organizing and materializing abstractions in order to make sense of the present social order. Disciplines represented here include literature studies, gender studies, biology, ethnology, archeology, history, religion, game studies, cultural sociology, and film studies. Individual essays cover topics such as the fantastic creatures of medieval chronicle, mummy medicine in eighteenth-century Sweden, how fears of disease filtered through the universal and adaptable vampire, the gender aspects of goddess worship in the secular West, ecocentrism in fantasy fiction, how videogames are dealing with the remediation of heritage, and more.