 | Exceptional State The contributors address a range of topics, paying particular attention to the dynamics of gender and race. Their essays include a surprising reading of the ostensibly liberal movies Wag the Do g and Three Kings , an exploration of the rhetoric surrounding the plan to remake the military into a high-tech force less dependent on human bodies, a look at the significance of the popular Left Behind series of novels, and an interpretation of the Abu Ghraib prison photos. They scrutinize the national narrative created to justify the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ways that women in those countries have responded to the invasions, the contradictions underlying calls for U.S. humanitarian interventions, and the role of Africa in the U.S. imperial imagination. The volume concludes on a hopeful note, with a look at an emerging anti-imperialist public sphere. Contributors . Omar Dahbour, Ashley Dawson, Cynthia Enloe, Melani McAlister, Christian Parenti, Donald E. Pease, John Carlos Rowe, Malini Johar Schueller, Harilaos Stecopoulos Ashley Dawson is Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. He is author of Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain . Malini Johar Schueller is Professor of English at the University of Florida. She is the author of U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890 and The Politics of Voice: Liberalism and Social Criticism From Franklin to Kingston and a coeditor of Messy Beginnings: Postcoloniality and Early American Studies . |
