[Commlist] Call for Papers: 'Post-9/11 Representation after 25 Years'

Call for Papers: European Journal of American Culture

Special Issue: 'Post-9/11 Representation after 25 Years'

A special issue of the European Journal of American Culture 46.2 (Summer 
2026)

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/european-journal-of-american-culture#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/european-journal-of-american-culture#call-for-papers>

Edited by:

Colin Halloran, Old Dominion University, (chall032 /at/ odu.edu) 
<mailto:(chall032 /at/ odu.edu)>

Marc Ouellette, Old Dominion University, (mouellet /at/ odu.edu) 
<mailto:(mouellet /at/ odu.edu)>

 From the instant the first news reports appeared, the events of 11 
September 2001 changed the way texts are created, produced, shared, and 
received and with them the way we read, speak, think and understand our 
day-to-day existence changed, as well. Winston Wheeler Dixon’s early 
collection, Post-9/11 Film & Television(2004) attempted to capture the 
initial changes, as did Lynn Spiegel’s (2004) moment defining essay, 
‘Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11’.However, ‘9/11’ has 
had and indeed continues to have a thorough and lasting intertextual 
impact on American culture, writ large, as Ouellette presciently points 
to in his 2008 essay on Stephen Spielberg Productions’ post-9/11 video 
games, ‘I hope you never see another day like this’. Here, we take an 
important cue from Susan Jeffords’ studies of what she calls ‘Vietnam 
representation’ (1989, 1992), which includes ‘films, novels, personal 
accounts, collections of observations and experiences, and political and 
social analyses’ (1989, p. 1) to explore the lingering impacts of 9/11 
twenty-five  years on. Importantly, like with Vietnam representation, 
9/11 texts need not deal directly with the events; rather, they bear the 
traces, archetypes, themes, and images that invoke the germinal event 
and its outcomes. It is no mistake that the American Movie Classics 
network ran Red Dawn(1984) in heavy rotation in late 2001 and early 
2002, nor is it an accident that the film was remade in 2012, with the 
plot altered to include a member of the ‘axis of evil’. No episode of 
Friends, with its stock images of the ‘twin towers’, will ever be the 
same. Moreover, the presence lingers in other forms and other texts, 
particularly given the Trump regime’s threats of ‘Gitmo’, deportations, 
and the return to Bagram at present.

As we reach the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks, we invite 
scholars in a host of disciplines to think through how ‘9/11’ conditions 
the production, distribution, and reception of 21st century texts. Here, 
we mean texts in the truest sense, from the tiniest representation to 
works of art, poetry, novels, film, television, music, games, and other 
media. Moreover, 9/11 functions both centrifugally and centripetally, 
changing how texts produced both prior to and after the attacks are 
perceived and interpreted. Thus, we also invite scholars to theorize and 
consider whether post-9/11 representation has become a distinct mode or 
whether the weight of Vietnam representation lingers, particularly in 
the valourization of veterans, as the hagiography of American 
Sniperclearly suggests.

Topics might include but should not be limited to:

  *

    Allegories and intertexts of 9/11 and/or the war on terror

  *

    Sci-fi/fantasy and themes of the war on terror

  *

    War poetry, war elegies,

  *

    Sport and games as surrogates for war

  *

    Language and semiotics, particularly the reshaping of what can and
    cannot be said.

  *

    Memes, gifs, images and social media

  *

    Cultural resistance and activism

  *

    Setting the stage for right-wing extremism

  *

    Jingoism and the play of patriotism

  *

    Post-9/11 video, table top, and card games

  *

    The reshaping of the gender order in post-9/11 cultural productions

  *

    Genre and/or genre theory, including industrial, audience and
    institutional expectations

  *

    Ethnography and the multiple layers of community

  *

    Cult productions, their fans and their producers

  *

    The limits of populism and of media effects

  *

    Paratexts and user-developed content

Article proposals (roughly 300-500 word abstracts) are sought by 31 
August 2025.

Timeline:

  *

    31 August 2025proposals due

  *

    15 September 2025letters of intent and comments on abstracts
    returned to authors

  *

    31 December 2025articles (5000-6000w)

  *

    1 February 2026readers’ comments returned to authors

  *

    1 April 2026revised (final) submissions due

  *

    Proofs and release to follow

Contributors are welcome to send completed papers but we kindly ask for 
a note indicating that a paper will be coming ahead of the end of year 
due date.

Please send abstracts and questions to both editors at:

(mouellet /at/ odu.edu) <mailto:(mouellet /at/ odu.edu)>

(chall032 /at/ odu.edu) <mailto:(chall032 /at/ odu.edu)>


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