Pub. date: 23 Feb 2012
Paperback $29.95 (also in hardcover)
Description
Comic Books and American Cultural History is an anthology that examines the ways in which comic books can be used to understand the history of the United States. Over the last twenty years, there has been a proliferation of book-length works focusing on the history of comic books, but few have investigated how comics can be used as sources for doing American cultural history.
These original essays illustrate ways in which comic books can be used as resources for scholars and teachers. Part 1 of the book examines comics and graphic novels that demonstrate the techniques of cultural history; the essays in Part 2 use comics and graphic novels as cultural artifacts; the third part of the book studies the concept of historical identity through the 20th century; and the final section focuses on different treatments of contemporary American history. Discussing topics that range from romance comics and Superman to
American Flagg! and
Ex Machina, this is a vivid collection that will be useful to anyone studying comic books or teaching American history.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
“Comic Books as History Teachers”
By Matthew Pustz
Part I: Doing Cultural History Through Comic Books
1. “How Wonder Woman Helped My Students ‘Join the Conversation:’ Comic Books as Teaching Tools in a History Methodology Course”
By Jessamyn Neuhaus
2. “Comics as Primary Sources: The Case of
Journey into Mohawk Country”
By Bridget M. Marshall
3. “Transcending the Frontier Myth: Dime Novel Narration and (Jesse) Custer’s Last Stand in
Preacher”
By William Grady
4. “ ‘Duel. I’ll Give You a DUEL’: Intimacy and History in Megan Kelso’s
Alexander Hamilton Trilogy”
By Alison Mandaville
Part II: Comic Books as Cultural Artifacts
1. “American Golem: Reading America through Super-New Dealers and ‘the Melting Pot’”
By Martin Lund
2. “ ‘Dreams May End, But Love Never Does’: Marriage and Materialism in American Romance Comics, 1947-1954”
By Jeanne Emerson Gardner
3. “Parody and Propaganda: Fighting American and The Battle Against Crime and Communism in the 1950s”
By John Donovan
4. “Grasping for Identity: The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu”
By Peter Lee
5. “ ‘Paralysis and Stagnation and Drift’: America’s Malaise as Demonstrated in Comic Books of the 1970s”
By Matthew Pustz
6. “The Shopping Malls of Empire: Cultural Fragmentation, the New Media, and Consumerism in Howard Chaykin’s
American Flagg!”
By Matthew J. Costello
Part III: Comic Books and Historical Identity
1. “Transformers and Monkey Kings: Gene Yang’s
American Born Chinese and the Quest for Identity”
By Todd S. Munson
2. “Agent of Change: The Evolution and Enculturation of Nick Fury”
By Philip G. Payne and Paul S. Spaeth
3. “The US HIV/AIDS Crisis and the Negotiation of Queer Identity in Superhero Comics, or, Is Northstar Still a A Fairy?”
By Ben Bolling
Part IV: Comic Books and Contemporary History
1. “The Militarism of American Superheroes After 9/11”
By A. David Lewis
2. “Septemeber 11, 2001: Witnessing History, Demythifying the Story in
American Widow ”
By Yves Davo
3. “ ‘The Great Machine Doesn’t Wear a Cape!’: American Cultural Anxiety and the Post-9/11 Superhero”
By Jeff Geers
Author(s)
Matthew Pustz is the author of
Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa and currently teaches history and American Studies at a variety of schools in the Boston area.
Reframing 9/11Film, Popular Culture and the “War on Terror”
edited by Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell
Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 13 May 2010
ISBN: 9781441119056
256 Pages
Paperback $39.95 (also in hardcover and as an e-book)
Description
September 11th, 2001 remains a focal point of American consciousness, a site demanding ongoing excavation, a site at which to mark before and after “everything” changed. In ways both real and intangible the entire sequence of events of that day continues to resonate in an endlessly proliferating aftermath of meanings that continue to evolve. Presenting a collection of analyses by an international body of scholars that examines America’s recent history, this book focuses on popular culture as a profound discursive site of anxiety and discussion about 9/11 and demystifies the day’s events in order to contextualize them into a historically grounded series of narratives that recognizes the complex relations of a globalized world. Essays in
Reframing 9/11 share a collective drive to encourage new and original approaches for understanding the issues both within and beyond the official political rhetoric of the events of the “The Global War on Terror” and issues of national security.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword: Reza Aslan
Introduction: Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell
Section One: (Re)Creating Language
Chapter One: Fear, Terrorism and Popular Culture, David L. Altheide
Chapter Two: The Aesthetics of Destruction: Contemporary US Cinema and TV Culture , Mathias Nilges
Chapter Three: 9/11, British Muslims, and Popular Literary Fiction, Sara Upstone
Chapter Four: Left Behind in America: The Army of One at the End of History, Jonathan Vincent
Chapter Five: 9/11, Manhood, Mourning, and the American Romance, John Mead
Chapter Six: An Early Broadside: The Far Right Raids Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Jeff Birkenstein
Chapter Seven: The Sound of the “War on Terror”, Corey K. Creekmur
Section Two: Visions of War and Terror
Chapter Eight: Avatars of Destruction: Cheerleading and Deconstructing the “War on Terror” in Video Games, David Annandale
Chapter Nine: The Land of the Dead and the Home of the Brave: Romero’s vision of a Post 9/11 America, Terence McSweeney
Chapter Ten: Superman is the Faultline: Fissures in the Monomythic Man of Steel, Alex Evans
Chapter Eleven: The Tools and Toys of (the) War (on Terror): Consumer Desire, Military Fetish and Regime Change in Batman Begins, Justine Toh
Chapter Twelve: “It was like a movie”: The impossibility of representation in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006), Karen Randell
Chapter Thirteen: The Contemporary Politics of the Western Form: Bush, Saving Jessica Lynch, and Deadwood, Stacy Takacs
Section Three: Prophetic Narratives
Chapter Fourteen: Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam’s Brazil through the 9/11 Looking Glass, David Price
Chapter Fifteen: Cultural Anxiety, Moral Clarity and Willful Amnesia: Filming Philip K. Dick After 9/11, Lance Rubin
Chapter Sixteen: Prolepsis and the “War on Terror”: Zombie Pathology and the Culture of Fear in 28 Days Later…, Anna Froula
Afterword: John Cawelti
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index
Author(s)
Jeff Birkenstein is an Associate Professor of English at Saint Martin's University in Lacey, Washington. Birkenstein's major interests lie in American Literature post-1865, American and world short story, the short story sequence, and cultural and food criticism. An edited collection of essays,
Cultural Representation in the International Short Story Sequence (co-edited with Robert M. Luscher, University of Nebraska at Kearney) has just been accepted for publication. He has published several papers in academic journals as well as book reviews, commentaries, essays and a short story. He teaches a range of classes, from Freshman Seminar and Composition to African American Literature, The Short Story, Food & Fiction, and Narratives from the Aftermath of 9/11. Birkenstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2003; he has a second MA in Teaching English as a Second/Other Language.
Anna Froula is an Assistant Professor of film studies at East Carolina University. Froula teaches courses on war literature and film, American outlaws, national mythology, and film history, theory, and fundamentals. She has published and presented on on representations of military women, masculinity, and World War II, Vietnam, and the “War on Terror.” She is currently working on a manuscript that explores popular representations of American military women from World War II to the present.
Karen Randell is a Principal Lecturer in Film at Southampton Solent University, UK where she is Programme Leader for Film and Television. She teaches contemporary cinema and film history and her research interests include: war genre, trauma, masculinity and early cinema. She is published on trauma in film in Art in the Age of Terrorism (London: Holberton Publication: 2005) and in
SCREEN. She is co-editor (with Sean Redmond) of
The War Body on Screen (Continuum, NY: 2008) and
Screen Methods: Comparative Readings in Film Studies (Wallflower Press: 2005) with Jacqueline Furby.
