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. / 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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_253277 |
| Contributors | Johnson-Lewis, Erika (authoraut), Edwards, Leigh H. (professor directing dissertation), Berry, R. M. (university representative), Johnson, David (committee member), Rai, Amit (committee member), Proffitt, Jennifer (committee member), Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
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