This history of American Orientalism uses articulation theory to map the processes by which discourse around the representation of Arabs and Muslims moved from the symbolic to the material, resulting in public support for the 2003 War on Iraq. By tracing the circulation of images and meanings in both American popular culture and U.S. foreign policy, this dissertation argues that American Orientalism from the former, was increasingly drawn upon by foreign policy makers to nullify the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome," the American public's learned aversion to direct military intervention abroad. The action movie genre, and its use of American Orientalism to construct an American identity in binary opposition to its Arab Other, are shown to have contributed to the rise of a neo-conservative foreign policy paradigm in the United States, beginning with the 1991 Gulf War, and advancing to full dominance with George W. Bush's open declaration of his "War on Terror," based on a pre-emptive and potentially unlimited war doctrine. The contradictory constructions of the Middle East and their non-essential correspondences to changing economic, political and cultural contexts, are demonstrated by following the development of American Orientalism in U.S. culture and foreign policy discourse since the late 1800's, using a communication influenced, critical cultural studies approach guided by the theories of Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, and Stuart Hall. The representative opposition of Arab and American identities, and American Orientalism's internal consistency across disparate spheres of discourse, are shown to have increased around the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, as well as the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, conflating representations of Arabs, of Muslims, and of terrorism. Action movies of the 1980's and 1990's constructed a new American identity, whose politics, articulated to neo-conservative calls for a "resurgent America," are potentially more damaging than Hollywood's proliferation of Arab stereotypes. This dissertation closely examines the presence of American Orientalism, and accompanying support for neo-conservativism, in the public relations strategies of the 1991 Gulf War, in the films True Lies, Executive Decision, and The Siege, and in the televised statements of George W. Bush given during the days after September 11, 2001.

An examination of fictional feature films produced in the United States between the mid-1950s to the end of the 1990s. The author argues that youth films comprise a genre of late twentieth-century American cinema, and that they reconstitute significant narrative and thematic characteristics of the novelistic Bildungsroman and its modern literary variants, the childhood initiation tale and the coming-of-age or the rites-of-passage story. The genre of modern youth films includes not only teen entertainments but also social problem films and more personal, quasi-autobiographical works by modern directors. Overall, youth films commonly dramatize situations and events that bear upon the child's initiation into new domains of psychosocial experience and the adolescent's and postadolescent's encounters with the pleasures and perils of modern life, thereby taking up the leitmotif of identity formation that is typically associated with twentieth-century literary fiction, autobiography and stage drama. A further argument is that the genre of youth films reflects the culturally and aesthetically eclectic character of contemporary American cinema. As a mass medium the American cinema promotes the cultural fantasies of a commercialistic society; but as an art form it shares with modern fiction and drama a capacity for social criticism, irony, and self-reflexivity. The study explores these dual faces of contemporary cinema by analyzing it's representations of American youth as symbols of generational and social change. Three significant phases in the history of youth films are discussed: Its cultural origins in youth melodramas of the 1950s; the ideologically revisionist films of the American Film Renaissance made between 1967 and 1977; the expanding range of subjects and themes in the genre during the period of the American Independent Film Movement from 1987 through 2000. Special emphasis is given to the theme of memory in youth films; the genre's multi-ethnic subjects and perspectives; and the impact of modern film aesthetics on film genre theory.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisors: Mary Jean Pfaelzer and Peter X. Feng, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D. in English)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1981. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 563-579).

The idea that gay men and straight women have much in common has a long cultural history, as seen in the work of sexologists, feminists, sociologists and cultural historians from the late 19th onward. Stories of relationships between gay men and straight women have been a significant, recurring phenomenon in American popular culture throughout much of the twentieth century, and the period from the late-1950s onward marks a time when such relationships became increasingly prevalent. With the weakening of Hollywood's self-censoring Hays Code and the maturing of television as a mass-market medium, the late-1950s/early-1960s saw the development of openly gay male characters who frequently shared friendships with straight women. Films and television shows featuring this dynamic grew more numerous and circulated more widely as time passed, but these developments progressed differently and at different rates for film and television. This study investigates the development, circulation and reception of representations of the gay-man/straight-woman duo as a cultural figure in North American film and television during the latter half of the twentieth century. As a set of texts in which sex and gender mediate each other in powerful ways, these gay-man/straight-woman stories produce rich analytic possibilities. Drawing on textual analysis, socio-historical context, and audience research, the project outlines the major relationship dynamics found in these gay-man/straight-woman texts (mother-and-son; perfect-couples; gals-and-pals), the historical shifts in their production and popularity, and the implications they hold for the ways our culture imagines relationships between men and women. Despite their gay cachet, the majority of these texts re-circulate normative clichés about gay male and straight female subjectivities and relationships, patterns that reproduce conventional, conservative thinking about who holds and deserves power and respect in our culture. Yet a few of these texts also provide alternative models for relationships between men and women, gay and straight, that contribute to more expansive possibilities for all: a culture of queer variations and relations. These examples affirm the emotional, social and affective value of relationships that cannot be neatly categorized into familial or romantic models, and argue for the importance of friendship as a form of social practice.

This dissertation seeks to understand how a re-invigorated sense of American exceptionalism circulated within the texts of several prime time serial television programs. American exceptionalism has functioned as a foundational mythology and a justifying discourse that works to create a sense of national unity through participation in rituals of national belonging. Television is a cultural site where rituals of national belonging are experienced and shared. As such, it is important to examine how television texts engage with and participate in the creation, cultivation, and circulation of nationalist mythologies, ideologies, and discourses. To understand serial television's engagement with exceptionalist themes and myths, I begin in chapter one by offering a history of American exceptionalism as it emerged through the institutionalization of American studies as a discipline. Chapter two looks at HBO's Deadwood and CBS's Jericho and examines how they engage with foundational exceptionalist tropes such as destiny, frontier, and the jeremiad. Chapter three engages with the Fox series 24 and the Showtime series Dexter, to describe the intersection of American exceptionalism's history as a justifying discourse and the legal construction of the state of exception in the discourse of the ticking time bomb scenario as it was deployed to legitimize the use of torture. The final chapter analyzes how ABC's Lost and SyFy's Battlestar Galactica negotiate with American exceptionalism in terms of both the state of exception and the ticking time bomb as well as with the foundationalist tropes of mission and destiny, the frontier and the garden. / A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 25, 2010. / Post-9/11, Serials, Television, State of Exception, American Exceptionalism, Television Studies, U.S. Culture / Includes bibliographical references. / Leigh H. Edwards, Professor Directing Dissertation; R. M. Berry, University Representative; David Johnson, Committee Member; Amit Rai, Committee Member; Jennifer Proffitt, Committee Member.

Thesis (MPhil)--Open University.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 10, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: Dr. Lee Wilkins. Includes bibliographical references.