Representations of New York Urban Spaces in American Literature after the 9/11 Attacks

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First, I compiled a bibliography of primary and secondary sources on contemporary American literature and culture with a focus on its representation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath, and cultural theories on the urban space and its representation. I examined this in relation to my previous studies of modern New York and the use of skyscrapers clarifying disjunction as well as continuation in the tradition. Then, I examined individual works to find out how artists revisited the modern narrative of the city after the experience of destruction. In addition, I studied a group of novels that use mother-son relationships as symbols of resiliency in contextualizing traumatic experiences. To examine the topic in a broader context, I discussed Japanese artists' representation of New York/USA as well as Japanese works on past disasters and their traumas to initiate an internationally collaborative research project on disaster and its representations.