9/11: 20 Years Later

9/11: 20 YEARS SINCE

Sept 2021 marked 20 years since the 9/11 attacks. This project traces the echoing reverberations of 9/11 and its multiple invocations, meanings and traumas in these last 20 years. Drawing on post-9/11 literature, films, comedy, music, speeches, digital media and other cultural productions, this project focuses particularly on the experiences of Muslim and Arab communities in America and in the vast geopolitical areas drawn into the War on Terror. This project is grounded in the exhortation by Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian American poet, to “affirm life, affirm life…affirm life.”

• We show how Muslims and Arabs have been racialized before and after 9/11 in American film and media
• We spotlight changes (related to laws, immigration, surveillance, military spending, and more) in American life which have become normalized in a post-9/11 world
• We seek to understand the impact that 9/11 has had on literary and media production
• We document how our local community, in Starkville Mississippi, remembers 9/11 and its impact 20 years later.

WHO WE ARE: This project was created by students at Mississippi State University in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022, with assistance from Mazie Pizzolato. For more information, contact Dr. Dhanashree Thorat (Assistant Professor, Dept of English) at dt1349@msstate.edu

Learn more about the experiences of Muslim students at MSU after 9/11.

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