Read more
This book examines the figure of the sleeper agent as part of post-9/11 political, journalistic and fictional discourse. There is a tendency to discuss the terroristic threat after 9/11 as either a faraway enemy to be hunted down by military force or, on the other hand, as a ubiquitous, intangible threat that required constant alertness at home. The missing link between these two is the sleeper agent - the foreign enemy hiding among US citizens. By analyzing popular television shows, several US comic books, and a broad variety of Hollywood films that depict sleeper agents direct or allegorically, this book explores how a shift in perspective-from terrorist to sleeper agent-brings new insights into our understanding of post-9/11 representations of terrorism. The book's interdisciplinary focus between media studies, cultural studies, and American studies, suggests that it will find an audience in a variety of fields, including historical research, narratology, popular culture, as well asmedia and terrorism studies.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Fiction, 9/11, and the Sleeper Agent.- 3. The Sleeper in Hollywood Cinema after 9/11.- 4. The Sleeper in US TV Series after 9/11 .- 5. The Sleeper in Comic Books after 9/11.- 6. Conclusion.
About the author
Vanessa Ossa is Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Applied Science in Cologne, Germany. She is a former member of the Collaborative Research Center 923 ¿Threatened Order¿Societies under Stress,¿ in Tübingen and co-editor of, ¿
Threat Communication and the US Order after 9/11: Medial Reflections.¿ Her research focuses on narrative representations of post-9/11 terrorism and transmedial narratology, with a particular interest in films, fictional television, comic books, video games, and related participatory practices.
