Earticle

초록

영어

Building on the previous works of African American historians, political scientists, literary theorists and critics, film historians and critics, this paper argues that The Birth of a Nation is not only a propagandistic epic presenting the vision of a new modern nation built on the destruction of black bodies, but also of a great empire to be born through the ideology of white supremacy in the context of the contemporary political milieu of Wilsonian democracy. I elucidate the interconnectedness between domestic racial dominance and violence within the US based on the ideology of white supremacy, and the expansion of the US as an imperial power in the intertextual relationship among Griffith’s film and the writings of Thomas Dixon Jr. and Woodrow Wilson. An era eerily reminiscent of the present period in American history, the idea of ‘American democracy’ in the formulation of Wilsonian democracy propagating the fantasy of America as a land of freedom gave legitimacy to US’s emergence as an imperial power. The mobilization of the idea of American democracy has always gone hand in hand with its segregationist and/or racist domestic policies, and I demonstrate that this idea of American democracy has served well to posit a white, imperial democracy outside the US while depriving the rights of non-white bodies by dehumanizing them within the US, as manifested in The Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) announcing the birth of a white, imperial America.

목차

I. Segregation, White Supremacy and American Democracy
II. The Birth of a White Nation
III. “Nation or Empire?” From Nation to Empire
IV. Conclusion
Works Cited
Abstract

키워드

저자

• Jee Hyun An [ Seoul National University, Professor ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  미국소설 [마크 트웨인 리뷰]

• 간기

  연3회

• pISSN

  1738-5784

• 수록기간

  1991~2020

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 843 DDC 813