CL/CSDS 8910

CL/CSDS 8910, section 004, meeting Wednesday evenings, “ We are All Americans: Re-Imagining America in a Post-9/11 World" taught by Visiting Professor Jaap Kooijman from the University of Amsterdam.

CL/CSDS 8910
CL/CSDS 8910, section 004, meeting Wednesday evenings, “ We are All Americans: Re-Imagining America in a Post-9/11 World" taught by Visiting Professor Jaap Kooijman from the University of Amsterdam:
‚ÄúNous sommes tous am√©ricains‚Ä? declared the French newspaper Le Monde after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For a short moment, we were all Americans. This seminar examines how ‚ÄúAmerica‚Ä? has been depicted in global popular culture, both produced in the USA as well as in other parts of the world, including film, television, art, and pop music. A clear distinction will be made between an imagined ‚ÄúAmerica‚Ä? and the nation-state USA. In the USA, 9/11 has been used as a critical point in time to rethink American national identity, often based on a rigid ‚Äúus‚Ä? versus ‚Äúthem‚Ä? paradigm. Using recent texts written by, among others, Jean Baudrillard, J√ºrgen Habermas, W.J.T. Mitchell, Lynn Spigel, and Slavoj ¬Æi¬æek, we will discuss how 9/11 functions in the re-imagining of ‚ÄúAmerica‚Ä? both within and outside of the USA.
Literature:
- Reader
- Jean Baudrillard, America, translated by Chris Turner, London and New York: Verso, 1988.
- Jaap Kooijman, Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008.
For more information, see Professor Kooijman’s homepage:
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/j.w.kooijman/page3.html