9/11 & the war on Terror in U.S. Culture

David Kieran, Washington and Jefferson College

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the United States’ response to them stand as the defining moment for United States foreign policy and, perhaps until COVID-19, United States culture as a whole in the twenty-first century. This course will examine the history of the post-September 11th period, asking both what the domestic and foreign policy responses to the attacks have been, how Americans engaged with those events and policies, and how they have been represented in popular culture. As we do so, we will read primary documents from the period, the best recent scholarship, and a range of popular texts that includes long-form journalism, documentary and feature film, fiction, and memorials. Our discussions will take seriously the premise that cultural texts do not simply reflect already-extant cultural ideas but rather play a critical role in the production of competing ideas about events, their cultural significance, and their political import. Our goal will be to analyze not only the events of September 11 and the United States’ political, military, and cultural response to them but also how those events and responses are significant within larger debates about of race, gender, citizenship, and patriotism in the contemporary United States as well as questions about the United States’ role in global affairs.