UCLA

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, are narrated as a critical moment in United States history. This dissertation is about that narration—the story of 9/11, and the affective nationalisms that accompany that story, as it is told to, through, and around the figure of the child. With this research, I examine the figure of the child. I consider the child as an icon within 9/11 narratives, an audience for a story of national trauma, and a creator and mobilizer of cultural production and its corollary affective nationalism. I examine what role the figure of the child plays in the production of a national imaginary organized around a shared condition of grief, loss, and terror, or, alternatively, of hope and futurity. I ask what a critical examination of the figure of the child within 9/11 discourses reveals about the gendered, raced, and classed production of American nationalist sentiment.