AMST 411: Post-9/11 Culture
Jeffrey Melnick
617-287-6775
jeffrey.melnick@umb.edu
Wheatley 5-56
Office Hours: TBD
McCormack 2-209
Course Description:
This American Studies course is interested in exploring the cultural legacies of 9/11. This 9/11 class will not be explicitly concerned with capital “P” politics: the real burden of the course has more to do with the construction of what I call “9/11 culture” in American popular arts than with the motivations, strategies, or outcomes associated with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003. Yet the wars shadow every moment of the class. We will begin the class by showing America: A Tribute to Heroes, the celebrity telethon that was broadcast on September 21, mostly to help us begin to understand the rapid deployment of hero as a keyword in our post-9/11 discourse. Throughout the course we will consider key words and phrases that came to define the era. “First responder,” “hero,” “terrorist,” “us,” “Middle Eastern,” and so on, will all come under historically-contextualized scrutiny.
To understand the contours of post-9/11 culture it will be important for students to confront a wide variety of texts (including fiction, popular songs, rumors, CD covers and inserts, telethons, stand-up comedy routines, political rhetoric, Hollywood and independent film, poetry, photographs, video games, the “Portraits of Grief” series in the New York Times, and comic strips, to name a few) and develop skills for historicizing and interpreting them all. Crucial also will be to develop an appropriate periodization of the “post-9/11” which includes attention to the “endless wars” abroad, Hurricane Katrina, the development of Facebook and other social media, and so on. We will investigate serious commemorations and seemingly superficial entertainments, as we wrestle with the question of how people in the United States have incorporated the events of that day into larger historical narratives.
The course satisfies the university’s distribution requirement for the humanities. It is focused at once on the subject matter of 9/11 narratives but will also help students develop crucial skills having to do with the relationship of the mutually constitutive nature of the “real” and the “representational” and will do so through a multiplicity of close readings of cultural texts (musical, literary, visual, and so on) situated in the appropriate historical context.
Schedule of Classes:
Unit 1: Cultural First Responders
In our first few weeks we will consider questions surrounding “cultural first responders”—the agents of media production who rushed toward the tragedy to create documentary reports and cultural narratives of the tragedy and immediate fallout. Major texts will include a telethon that was aired a week and a half after the attacks (America: A Tribute to Heroes), the huge number of pictures produced on the day many have described as the most photographed in human history (and as discussed in the Friend book and elsewhere) and the New York Times’ deeply influential “Portraits of Grief” obituary series. But we will also consider less organized or formal “cultural first responders” including, most notably, blogs created in response to the attacks, David Rees’ comic series “Get Your War On,” and the numerous and varied rumors that were created and circulated in the weeks and months after 9/11.
1st short assignment: Students will create a curated exhibit of cultural first responses that will include at least 6 visual entries and deeply contextualized annotations.
***Reading should be completed by date listed
9/7 Introductions and Course Overviews
9/9 Telethons and Rumors
Read Janet Langlois, “Celebrating Arabs”: Tracing Legend and Rumor Labryrinths in Post-9/11 Detroit” (sent via email)
Watch “America: A Tribute to Heroes” in class
9/14 Finish Tribute to Heroes in Class
Mark Lawson, “After the Fall” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/aug/16/artsfeatures.september11
(Add/Drop Ends 9/14)
9/16 Portraits of Grief
Read at least 20 of these New York Times features https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/pages/national/portraits/?p=041
and read David Harvey, https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/reichl13/files/2013/01/cracks-in-the-edifice-of-the-empire-state.pdf
and Nancy Miller, “Portraits of Grief” https://deceivingmemories.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2011/08/miller_portraitsofgrief.pdf
9/21 Get Your War On and Forbidden Thoughts
Read a bunch of David Rees, “Get Your War On” strips—at least a month or so. http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war1/
(the site is a bit hard to navigate. After reading the landing page I think you have to manually type in war2, war3, at the end of the url as you move through)
“Forbidden Thoughts About 9/11” https://www.salon.com/2002/09/07/forbidden_2/
9/23 Blogs and Digital Photos
Read Robert Andrews, “9/11: The Birth of the Blog” https://www.wired.com/2006/09/911-birth-of-the-blog/
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Kodak Moments, Flashbulb Memories: Reflections on 9/11”http://www.csun.edu/~vcspc00g/301/kodakmoments-911tdr.pdf
Michael Shulan, “Images of Democracy” (intro to Here is New York) https://hereisnewyork.org/about/democracy.asp
9/28 Material Culture and Archive Culture
Marita Sturken, “Objects That Lived” http://www.maritasturken.org/articles/Sturken_Objects_that_Lived_Memory_Studies_12_15.pdf
Daniel Harris, “The Kitschification of 9/11” https://www.salon.com/2002/01/26/kitsch_2/
Spend at least half an hour visiting this site to get a sense of it https://911digitalarchive.org/
9/30 Flash Animation, Video Games and More
Read Abby Denton, “Ultraviolent Flash Games After 9/11” https://medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/ultraviolent-flash-games-after-9-11-b416b836f28e
Unit 2: The New “Us”: The Expanding and Contracting Body of the Nation
We will make a major investigation into the creation of the category “looks Middle Eastern” in the 9/11 era in order to understand how the calculus of race in the United States was shaped by the attacks. Crucial to this unit will be an investigation of how the usual Black-white dyad was reformulated in the post-9/11 era. Among other things, we will try to create a timeline for the post-9/11 era (that includes the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the devastating flooding of New Orleans, the election of Barack Obama in 2008) that incorporates these racialized realities.
10/5 Which us?
View M.I.A. “Paper Planes” in class
Read: Mohja Kahf , “Hijab Scene 1,” “Hijab Scene 2,” “Hijab Scene 7” all found at https://www.poemist.com/mohja-kahf
Martín Espada, “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47868/alabanza-in-praise-of-local-100
Naomi Shihab Nye, “To Any Would-Be Terrorists” (sent as email)
10/7 Which us? (II)
Roopali Mukherjee, “Between Enemies and Traitors: Black Press Coverage of September 11…” (sent as email)
Moustafa Bayoumi, “Preface,” How Does it Feel to Be a Problem? (sent as email)\\
“Sanctioned Bias: Racial Profiling Since 9/11” (ACLU report—sent as email)
Listen to Playlist 1: Hip Hop Responds to 9/11
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1kXbo6CFxc8aJomoO1LjKi?si=0a740344d84b43b7
10/12 Corporate Media Enters the Chat
Asultany, “Arabs and Muslims in the Media After 9/11” (sent as email)
Hamrah, “Jessica Biel’s Hand” (email)
10/14 Corporate Media II
Chadha, “Mix This” https://www.villagevoice.com/2003/07/01/mix-this/
Alhassen, “Bellydancing, Bombs…” (email)
10/16
Read: Chang, “Rescue Me” (email)
Watch first episode Rescue Me
10/18
Discuss short assignment 2
Read Lewis, “Militarism of American Superheroes” (email)
10/23
Read Tom Junod, “The Falling Man” (from Esquire, email)
10/28
Listen Bruce Springsteen, The Rising https://open.spotify.com/album/23vzCh5cDn0LzdGmGWrT1d?si=3k7Nfxq-RJOfzboxbLWMXQ
Read: Scott, “The Poet Laureate of 9/11” https://slate.com/culture/2002/08/bruce-springsteen-the-poet-laureate-of-9-11.html
Read Pareles, “The New Boss” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/21/september11.usa
11/2
Read Tom Junod, “The Falling Man” (from Esquire, email)
In Class-Viewing: Falling Man documentary
11/4
Discuss rising and falling, wrap up unit
Unit 3: Memory on the Landscape of Grief
Here we dive into the scholarly work of cultural geographers and others who help us understand how concrete “place” (actual literal sites on the landscape) are converted into “space” (where hierarchies of power and resistance are articulated and challenged. Drawing on the work of Kenneth Foote, in particular, we will explore how 9/11 gave rise to some very particular “emplacements” of grief. Here we will first study practices of memorialization more generally and then in the 9/11 context more particularly, and then we will, as a class, work to create a guide to Boston’s own landscape of grief in which we will “plot” our two major 9/11 memorials (at the Public Garden and at Logan Airport) on a larger map of memorial sites.
3rd short assignment: Comparative study of at least three distinct 9/11 memorials and/or museums.
11/9
The 9/11 Memorial: Spend at least 45 minutes navigating this site and reading entries (or watching videos) in a particular tab. I will expect you to be ready in class to discuss what you learned about/from this 9/11 memorial site:
Also: find at least one article about Boston’s 9/11 memorials and be prepared to summarize in class
11/11
HOLIDAY—no class
11/16 Thinking about “memorial mania”
Read Doss, “Remembering 9/11” (email)
Read Foote and Azaryahu, “Toward a Geography of Memory” (email)
(In class viewing: The Outsider)
11/18 Other Memorials:
What are we teaching the children? Read 9/11 Lesson plan and be prepared to discuss in detail (email)
11/20 Musical Memorial
Listen to John Adams “On the Transmigration of Souls”
https://open.spotify.com/album/53jSgFW3lHmQPZ494orzvZ?si=sFx09FkhTemZ3wFebBHQSw
Read Agugliaro, “John Adams ‘On the Transmigration…’”
https://daily.jstor.org/john-adams-on-the-transmigration-of-souls/
Read Rutherford-Johnson, “Memorials of Grief”
https://seismograf.org/en/artikel/memorials-grief-music-after-911
11/30 Other Memorials:
What are we teaching the children? Read 9/11 Lesson plan and be prepared to discuss in detail (email)
Unit 4: 9/11 Youth Cultures and Media Cultures and the Post-9/11
This final substantive unit will invite students to think about how young people—and particularly young people of color—were affected by the attacks and the political, economic, and cultural fallout. Here, along with the major works of history, we will also study comic books, video games, popular songs, YA and children’s literature, as we explore how young people were instructed to understand themselves and the wider culture surrounding them as it underwent major changes in the post-9/11 era. Students will themselves be introducing many of the texts we will use in this unit.
12/2
Read Eric Nuzum “Crash Into Me: America’s Implicit Music Censorship Since 9/11”
12/7
Read this article on Haram
https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/haram-where-were-you-on-9-11-interview
and then listen to their music here
https://haramharam.bandcamp.com/album/where-were-you-on-9-11
Also listen to Heems, Eat Pray Thug https://open.spotify.com/album/6y8FPX1d76PLgTuu2FvFAL?si=0B2sXYDXShOr_xU16z51cQ
(especially “Flag Shopping,” “Al Q8A,” “Suicide by Cop” and “Patriot Act”)
12/9
Read, Stahl, “Have You Played the War on Terror?”
12/14
Wrapping things up!
4th short assignment: due early next week