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English Language and Literature Commons

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Literature in English, North America

Purdue University

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Reading 9/11 Through The Holocaust In Philip Roth’S The Plot Against America And Art Spiegelman’S In The Shadow Of No Towers, Stella Setka Sep 2011

Reading 9/11 Through The Holocaust In Philip Roth’S The Plot Against America And Art Spiegelman’S In The Shadow Of No Towers, Stella Setka

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay argues that Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of New Towers open up new spaces for reading the trauma of 9/11 not simply as the tragic story of a single day in 2001, but as a traumatic event that shares referents with other catastrophes in history, most notably the Holocaust. Further, the author demonstrates that these works are more concerned with the politicization of 9/11 than they are with the terrorist attacks themselves.


Nationalism, Alterity, And Cognitive Studies In Mohsin Hamid, Laila Halaby, And Jess Walte, Aaron Derosa Sep 2011

Nationalism, Alterity, And Cognitive Studies In Mohsin Hamid, Laila Halaby, And Jess Walte, Aaron Derosa

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay explores the metaphoric construction of the terrorist Other in 9/11 scholarship and literature. While academics demand an ethical engagement with Arab and Muslim Americans, they unwittingly reify a binary distinction of Other-Same that triangulates terrorist identity through ordinary Arabs and Muslims. Looking at Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land and Walter’s The Zero, I suggest an alternative metaphor for terrorism not as a regional or religious population, but as an internal impulse that dwells within us all. Doing so more ethically and productively aligns terrorism with the threat to global security in the post-9/11 era.