The American Historical Imaginary Contested

Narratives of the Past

CAROLINE GUTHRIE

“For anyone interested in why our national myths have been so intractable, despite constant historical evidence to the contrary, Guthrie’s American Historical Imaginary is a must read. Combining skillful close readings of mass cultural texts that engage traumatic historical events of the past, with a bold and ambitious theoretical argument about the centrality of mass culture as the terrain upon which the meanings of the past are negotiated and renegotiated, Guthrie’s text is nothing short of pathbreaking.”

—Alison Landsberg, author of Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge

“This is a must-read for those interested in understanding the prominent roles that media corporations play in shaping the collective historical imagination, as well as the various strategies that film and media makers implement to critically intervene and challenge the historical status quo.”

—Novotny Lawrence, co-editor of Beyond Blaxploitation

Caroline Guthrie examines the American relationship to versions of the past that are known to be untrue and asks why these myths persist, and why do so many people hold them so dear? To answer these questions, she examines popular sites where fictional versions of history are formed, played through, and solidified. From television’s reality show winners and time travelers, to the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, to the movies of Quentin Tarantino, this book examines how mass culture imagines and reimagines the most controversial and painful parts of American history.

CAROLINE GUTHRIE teaches with the department of communication and the women’s and gender studies program at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

Radical Hospitality

American Policy, Media, and Immigration

NOUR HALABI

Radical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration re-imagines the ethical relationship of host societies towards newcomers by applying the concept of hospitality to two specific realms that impact the lives of immigrants in the United States: policy and media. The book calls attention to the moral responsibility of the host in welcoming a stranger. It sets the stage for the analysis with a historical background of the first host-guest diads of American hospitality, arguing that the early history of American hospitality was marked by the degeneration of the host-guest relationship into one of host-hostage, normalizing a racial discrimination that continues to plague immigration hospitality to this day. Author Nour Halabi presents a historical policy and media discourse analysis of immigration regulation and media coverage during three periods of US history: the 1880s and the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1920s and the National Origins Act, and the 2000s and the Muslim travel ban. In so doing, it demonstrates how U.S. immigration hospitality, from its peaks in the post-Independence period to its nadir in the Muslim travel ban, has fallen short of true hospitality in spite of the nation’s oft-touted identity as a “nation of immigrants.” At the same time, the book calls attention to how a discourse of hospitality, although fraught, may allow a radical reimagining of belonging and authority that could unsettle settlercolonial assumptions of belonging and welcome a restorative outlook to immigration policy and its media coverage in society.

NOUR HALABI is an assistant professor at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds in the UK.