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Series Editors: Helena Grice & Tim Woods This series of textbooks focuses on key events in American history from the perspective of several different disciplines, offering the student a range of disciplinary perspectives on one particular historical event. Books in the series are unique in focusing on one particular event from a range of viewpoints.
David Holloway
This interdisciplinary study of how 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ were represented during the Bush era, shows how culture often functioned as a vital resource, for citizens attempting to make sense of momentous historical events that frequently seemed beyond their influence or control. Illustrated throughout, the book discusses representation of 9/11 and the war on terror in Hollywood film, the 9/11 novel, mass media, visual art and photography, political discourse, and revisionist historical accounts of American ‘empire,’ between the September 11 attacks and the Congressional midterm elections in 2006. As well as prompting an international security crisis, and a crisis in international governance and law, David Holloway suggests the culture of the time also points to a ‘crisis’ unfolding in the institutions and processes of republican democracy in the United States. His book offers a cultural and ideological history of the period, showing how culture was used by contemporaries to debate, legitimise, qualify, contest, or repress discussion, about the causes, consequences and broader meanings of 9/11 and the war on terror. David Holloway is a Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Derby. He is author of The Late Modernism of Cormac McCarthy, and co-editor of American Visual Cultures.
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ISBN: 978 0 7486 3381 4
Edinburgh
Cover image September 11th World Trade Center Attacks. © Seth Cohen/Bettmann/CORBIS | Cover design: Barrie Tullett
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Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk
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Representing American Events
9/11 and the War on Terror
9/11 and the War on Terrorr David Holloway
‘Providing an incisive and illuminating cultural and ideological analysis of dominant forms of media, culture and representation from the September 11, 2001 terror attacks through the 2006 Congressional elections, 9/11 and the War on Terror engages theoretical discourses and analyses of the event, media representation, including a chapter on cinema, and how 9/11 played out in literature and photography and visual art. The result in an excellent cultural history of our epoch full of original insight and interpretation.’ Douglas Kellner, Professor at UCLA and author of Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy
‘As the terror attacks on the United States become history as well as politics, there is now an opportunity for greater critical thinking on the representation of the event. In this timely and engaging book, David Holloway provides an impressive synchronic account of the meaning and importance of 9/11. It deserves to be widely read by scholars and postgraduates occupying positions in diverse disciplinary locations.’ Tim Dunne, Professor of International Relations, University of Exeter
Representing American Events Series Editors Tim Woods and Helena Grice, both at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth Titles published in the series include: The Kennedy Assassination by Peter Knight 9/11 and the War on Terror by David Holloway Forthcoming titles include: The Moon Landing by Alasdair Spark
9/11 and the War on Terror David Holloway
Edinburgh University Press
For Jenny, Calum and Ethan
© David Holloway, 2008 Edinburgh University Pres