The SMU Department of English and its Narrative Now Initiative are excited to announce an upcoming visit from Alan Nadel. Dr. Nadel is the William T. Bryan Chair in American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky and has published a variety of works, including books, essays, and poetry.
His free talk is titled "Mission Unaccomplished: American Cultural Narratives and Iraq War Films."
Event Schedule, February 12, 2025 -- Fondren Library's Texana Room
Reception: 5:00 p.m.
Conversation and Q&A: 6:00 p.m.
Alan Nadel, William T. Bryan Chair in American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky, has authored, most recently, Demographic Angst: American Film and Cultural Narratives of the 1950s (2018) and The Theater of August Wilson (2018). His other books include Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon (1988), Containment Culture (1995), Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan’s America (1997), and Television in Black-and-White America (2005). In addition, he has edited collections of essays on August Wilson and co-edited Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock: The Men Who Knew Too Much (2011), and Dramatic Apparitions and Theatrical Ghosts (2023). He has won prizes for the best essay in Modern Fiction Studies and the best essay in PMLA. He is former President of the International Society for the Study of Narrative and served on the society’s Executive Committee for 30 years. His poetry has appeared in several journals, including Georgia Review, New England Review, Partisan Review, Paris Review, Sewanee Review, and Shenandoah. He has also won the 2019 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize. His latest book, Mission Unaccomplished: American War Films in the Twenty-First Century, will be published by University of Texas Press in October 2025.
Traditionally, American cultural has iterated the narrative that peace is normal and war aberrant. War’s ultimate mission, therefore, is to restore peace. That cultural narrative informs traditional combat films, such that rationale for any specific mission is the adversary’s surrender, without which a formal Occupation, which transitions to peacetime, is impossible. Declaring the Iraq War “Mission Accomplished” without a surrender left American troops fighting a war without a mission, thereby turning the Occupation into an occupation, In The Hurt Locker, therefore, military service becomes a daily job bereft of its narrative arc, a point underscored by the fact that the episodes depicting discrete workdays could be arranged in almost any order. This talk will take an extended look at The Hurt Locker as exemplary of the post-Mission Accomplished war films and their informing cultural narrative.
Narrative Now invites all members of the SMU community, as well as the general public, to join in this unique opportunity to hear from this distinguished speaker. The event is free, but space is limited. Early arrival is recommended.