William H. Epstein and R. Barton Palmer (eds). Invented Lives, Imagined Communities: The Biopic and American National Identity

AbstractAs long as the American Constitution serves as the focal point of American identity, many constitutional interpretative theories also serve as roadmaps to various visions of American constitutional identity. Using the debate over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I expose the identity dimension of various interpretative theories and analyse the differences between the roadmaps offered by them. I argue that according to each of these roadmaps, courts’ authority to review legislation is required in order to protect a certain vision of American constitutional identity even at the price of thwarting Americans’ freedom to pursue their current desires. The conventional framing of interpretative theories as merely techniques to decipher the constitutional text or justifications for the Supreme Court’s countermajoritarian authority to review legislation and the disregard of their identity function is perplexing in view of the centrality of the Constitution to American national identity. I argue that this conventional framing is a result of the current understanding of American constitutional identity in terms of neutrality toward the question of the good. This reading of the Constitution as lacking any form of ideology at its core makes majority preferences the best take of current American identity, leaving constitutional theorists with the mission to justify the Court’s authority to diverge from majority preferences.

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War and the Contest over National Identity

The Sociological Review ◽

10.1177/003802610205000407 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 50 (4) ◽

pp. 586-609 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Roberta L. Coles

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Peace Movement ◽

American People ◽

American Character ◽

Us Military ◽

American President ◽

American National Identity ◽

Gulf Crisis ◽

The Persian Gulf ◽

Historical Moment

This paper looks at a recent historical moment in which the American national identity was defined and contested in the public arena. The Persian Gulf crisis of 1990–91 presents a case in point in which official actors attempted to define the American character and in so doing prescribed particular actions necessary to fulfill what it means to be an American. President George Bush's discourse used the crisis to rejuvenate US prestige and American confidence. He described Americans as unique in esteemed values and America as the only country capable of leading the world. In so doing, he invited American participation in support for US military intervention. On the other side, the peace movement chose to emphasize American weaknesses, domestic problems, and the gullible nature of the American people. In so doing, it attempted to shame Americans into supporting the anti-war movement.

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“The American Outlaws Are Our People”: Fox Sports and the Branded Ambivalence of an American Soccer Fan at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Television & New Media ◽

10.1177/15274764211053219 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 152747642110532

Author(s):

Charlotte E. Howell

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Participant Observation ◽

World Cup ◽

Sports Media ◽

Progressive Politics ◽

Media Companies ◽

Sports Programming ◽

American National Identity ◽

American Media

Drawing on fan studies, sports media studies, media industries studies, and participant observation of the American Outlaws, this essay analyzes specific aspects of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup as televised by Fox Sports in the wider context of soccer’s evolving place within the American sports media marketplace. American media companies have increasingly positioned soccer as an upscale sport in the U.S. In addition to representing an affluent and cosmopolitan taste culture, the representation of the American Outlaws as part of Fox Sports’ programming and branding flattened the frictions of class, national identity, politics, and race that shaped American soccer discourse in the summer of 2019. This essay explores this flattening and the underlying tensions between televising a tournament based in American national identity that allows for a more mass audience appeal and the more niche-based framing of soccer—including the progressive politics of women’s soccer—in U.S. sports media.

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Troubling Masculinities

10.14325/mississippi/9781496828576.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Glen Donnar

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Science Fiction ◽

American History ◽

War Films ◽

Hollywood Cinema ◽

American Cinema ◽

Media And Politics ◽

American National Identity ◽

The Impact ◽

Genre Study

The association of the attacks of 9/11 with Hollywood science fiction and disaster spectacle was immediate and pervasive. Succeeding calls in media and politics for the reassuring return of ‘strong’ masculine types—predominantly drawn from Hollywood westerns, action and war films—were widespread, revealing renewed cultural fears of threats to America from both within and without.Troubling Masculinities is the first dedicated multi-genre study of representations of masculinity in encounters with terror in post-9/11 American cinema. The book examines the impact of “terror-Others”, from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, across a broad range of sub-genres—including disaster melodrama, monster movies, post-apocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and ‘home invasion’ horror, action-thrillers and ‘frontier’ westerns—especially in relation to cinematic representations of masculinity in previous periods of national turmoil. The book demonstrates that the supposed reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Engaging critical arguments about how Hollywood cinema attempts to resolve male crisis in part through Orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this unraveling reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they encounter. The book concludes by showing how interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nation continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, Troubling Masculinities offers an important counternarrative in this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history.

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American National Identity and French Student Life:

Internationalism, National Identities, and Study Abroad ◽

10.2307/j.ctvqsdw4r.12 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 141-170

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Student Life ◽

American National Identity ◽

French Student

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Abandoned Quarries

Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691179131.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 129-136

Author(s):

Seth Perry

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

National Identity ◽

Religious History ◽

American Religious History ◽

Early National Period ◽

The Bible ◽

Early National ◽

American National Identity ◽

History Of ◽

National Period

This concluding chapter discusses the consequences of biblicism in the early national period for subsequent American religious history. It considers bible culture in the later nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the corporatization of religious printing amplifed the Bible's status as an abstract commodity. Responding to the arguments put forward by W. P. Strickland in his 1849 History of the American Bible Society, the chapter argues that attaching the Bible's importance to American national identity could not leave the Bible unchanged, because that is not how scripturalization works. It also explains how the Bible's availability for citation and re-citation fundamentally changed the desire, effectiveness, and circumstances of its citation. Finally, it uses the abandoned quarry—empty because it has flled other places—as a figure for the themes of citation, performance, and identity explored in this book.

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