BEYOND THE CHECKPOINT
Visual Practices in America’s Global War on Terror
Author: Rebecca A. Adelman
UMBC Assistant Professor of Media and Communication Studies Rebecca A. Adelman celebrates the release of her new book Beyond the Checkpoint from University of Massachusetts Press on April 30, 2014. Pre-order today from UMBC Bookstore and be one of the first to own this fascinating work about the visual culture of the Global War on Terror.
Since the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil, American citizenship has been redefined by the visual images associated with the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rebecca A. Adelman contends that, in viewing images such as security footage of the 9/11 hijackers, film portrayals of the attacks and subsequent wars, memorials commemorating the attacks, and even graphics associated with increased security in airports, American citizens have been recast as militarized spectators, brought together through the production, circulation, and consumption of these visual artifacts. Beyond the Checkpoint reveals that the visual is essential to the prosecution of the GWOT domestically and abroad, and that it functions as a crucial mechanism in the ongoing formation of the U.S. state itself and an essential component of contemporary American citizenship.
Tracing the connections between citizenship and spectatorship, and
moving beyond the close reading of visual representations, this book
focuses on the institutions and actors that create, monitor, and
regulate the visual landscape of the GWOT. Adelman looks around and
through common images to follow the complex patterns of practice by
which institutions and audiences engage them in various contexts. In the
process, she proposes a new methodology for studying visual cultures of
conflict, and related phenomena like violence, terror, and suffering
that are notoriously difficult to represent.
Attending to previously unanalyzed dimensions of this conflict, this book illustrates the complexity of GWOT visual culture and the variegated experiences of citizenship that result as Americans navigate this terrain.
- Univ. of Massachusetts Press