Read the volume HERE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n War Narratives<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent years I have taught and researched the role of genre in the emotional and ideological work of representations of war, especially in the representation of death in combat. The monograph that came out of this research, Combat Death in Contemporary American Culture: Popular Conceptions of War Since World War II<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>was published by Lexington Books in 2021. In it, I argue that melodrama and the adventure genre are both often used to render military death and military violence meaningful and attractive in a way that renders warfare perennially attractive in American culture. Combat maintains an allure of noble and\/or righteous service to the collective; killing is often depicted as an important rite of passage for mature masculinity, and dying in combat is justified as a worthy sacrifice for the national good, regardless of the actual context and purpose of the military action. Popular culture and film are primary vectors of these kinds of jingoistic narratives but they can be found in literature, visual art and non-fiction as well. My book aims to demystify the aesthetic and narrative devices that prevent us from seeing military violence (especially when deployed in wars of occupation and resource acquisition, as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) with honesty and compassion. See the short video interview about the book embedded below (I speak in French but there are English subtitles).<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n Recently published<\/a>: Combat Death in Contemporary American Culture<\/a><\/p>\n Read the book here:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Combat Death in Contemporary American Culture<\/a>(proofs)<\/p>\n Table of Contents:<\/strong><\/p>\n Introduction: Popular Culture, War, and Post\u2013WWII America 1<\/i><\/p>\n 1 Melodrama, Dying, and the Sacred: The Cult of Iwo Jima 27<\/i><\/p>\n 2 Melodrama Queered: The Outsider (1961) and The Portable<\/i><\/p>\n War Memorial (1968) 77<\/i><\/p>\n 3 Melodramatizing Iwo Jima in the Twenty-First Century:<\/i><\/p>\n James Bradley\u2019s and Clint Eastwood\u2019s Flags of Our Fathers 99<\/i><\/p>\n 4 Adventure, Killing, and the Pleasures of War: Robin Moore\u2019s<\/i><\/p>\n The Green Berets (1965) 117<\/i><\/p>\n 5 Adventure Revisited: Michael Herr\u2019s Dispatches (1977) and<\/i><\/p>\n Clint Eastwood\u2019s American Sniper (2014) 167<\/i><\/p>\n 6 Horror, Irony, and the Anti-War Novel: Gustav Hasford\u2019s<\/i><\/p>\n The Short-Timers 195<\/i><\/p>\n 7 The Hero\u2019s Journey to Film and Back: Kubrick\u2019s Full Metal<\/i><\/p>\n Jacket and Hasford\u2019s Counter-Attack 219<\/i><\/p>\n Coda: The Future of War Culture, the Cultural War for the Future<\/i><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/people.unil.ch\/agnieszkasoltysikmonnet\/files\/2023\/06\/cover_issue_1228_en_US-717x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nCombat Death in Contemporary American Culture: Popular Conceptions of War since WWII<\/a><\/blockquote>