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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
For submission guidelines, click here
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Brown, Bridget M. "The Terror is Real: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction," American Studies Program, New York University, April 2001.
My dissertation develops an analysis of the alien abduction phenomenon by drawing on extensive interviews with abductees from the New York City area and critical examination of the extensive popular literature on this topic. By reading these oral and written narratives alongside other cultural narratives with which they are in conversation, this project develops an interdisciplinary model for understanding alternative belief systems, including conspiracy theory. I hope to challenge psychological models for understanding such phenomena, which often fail to account for the specific historical contexts and lived experiences in which such beliefs are grounded. At the same time, I intervene into the historiography of post-industrialism by examining how many American have made meaning of a changing technological, political, and economic landscape through the beliefs and practices of everyday life. I argue in the dissertation that the stories abductees tell offer rich alternative histories of the period since the mid-1960’s. Abductees express a profound sense of powerlessness in contrast to aliens, who in abductee narratives embody technical and intellectual advantage. In contrast to the aliens, abductees - largely white and middle to lower middle class Americans - represent themselves as primitive, dominated, and colonized. By identifying with historically oppressed groups, abductees find a means for expressing their own sense of exclusion from national, technological, scientific, and social progress in American during this period. Their stories offer sobering counterpoints to narratives about the democratic possibilities of the space Age, the Information Age, and globalization.
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