Jetstream : American Identity at Home and Abroad Post-9/11

Cortese, Lauren (2024) Jetstream : American Identity at Home and Abroad Post-9/11. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This creative and critical body of research together consider the role of American identity post-9/11 through travel narratives. The critical analysis studies three novels as they present American identity post-9/11 in relation to the American Dream. The American Dream promises success via physical and social mobility, but this promise is compromised post-9/11 as increased national security and xenophobic fear impede this mobility, challenging the ideals that define American identity. Travel narratives in post-9/11 novels are a critical medium to present this crisis of nationhood. In travel narratives, the American traveler learns about themselves and their Americanness through the experience of identifying with the Other while away from home. The accompanying creative work, a novel titled Jetstream, is a response to the existing body of 9/11 fiction discussed in the critical research. While existing 9/11 fiction uses the family as metaphor for country to depict brokenness amidst tragedy, Jetstream instead suggests that the political divisiveness after the 2016 presidential election created an even deeper sense of fracture for Americans. Jetstream tells the story of one family from the suburbs of Washington, DC during three distinct eras: 9/11, 2016-2021, and 2051. In Jetstream the travel narratives show family members moving away from one another to understand themselves and their country in a time of national crisis. Their attempted reunion in 2051 is thwarted by a bizarre natural disaster which signifies the next great threat to national and global safety: the oncoming climate crisis. Together these bodies of work study the contradictions that inform the American mythos and how literature depicts those challenges in the globalized twenty-first century.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	27 Jan 2026 11:47
Last Modified:	27 Jan 2026 11:47
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101739
DOI:

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