Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 Volume 1: Perspectives in Literatures and Cultures - Hardcover

"On the whole, this is a highly useful volume that offers stimulating case studies and theoretical insights, as well as extremely helpful surveys and references which cover such an impressive range of sources that the collection can also function as a reference work which is bound to inspire and support further research in this field." -Dr Silke Stroh, Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster; Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 26.2, 2015 "This volume provides a very diverse and extensive exposure to different textual and medial modellings of alterity. I heartily recommend this book not only to those who are interested in the topic of 9/11, but also to anyone interested in exemplary studies of the strategies and processes of stereotyping." -Prof Dr Laurenz Volkmann, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena; Krieg und Literatur / War and Literature, 21 (2015)

"The effects of 9/11 ramify through a network of conduits and pathways, including the examples of expressive culture this volume explores; and the registration of those effects will likewise be felt in an array of documents and texts. The cultural, literary, and mass mediated effects of 9/11 encompass the globe and the chapters in this volume assume a transnational and international range of vantage points. The topics examined include the representation of Islam and Moslems in a number of texts and genres, the political and psychological dilemmas faced by characters in a number of literary works, and the refraction of current psycho-cultural-political tensions in forms of expressive culture in which the effects of 9/11 are felt in other than explicit ways. Was 9/11 a moment that punctuated and disrupted the movement of history or, as one of the authors suggests, did it act as a catalyst to escalate existing stereotypes? The chapters investigate not just different genres and cultural forms but distinct modes of intersection between the political, the cultural and the psychological. One achievement of this volume is to show how 9/11's effects at times insinuate themselves in discourse through nuance and subtlety, and at other times frontally assault texts and images. In the words of one article, "modern Dutch post-9/11 novels directly participate in current cultural and political discourses." By the same token, these cultural and political discourses participate in novels, films, TV shows, and the effects of 9/11 proliferate and concentrate in this exchange. This volume draws timely attention to the multiple forms of this complex interaction." Dr Patrick Hagopian, University of Lancaster