What Literature Can Do
“It was like a movie.”
Kristine Miller kept coming across that phrase. She first discovered it while reading testimonies of New York City firefighters and police officers collected in the wake of September 11, 2001, and housed in Colombia University’s Oral History Research Office. She uncovered it again in spring 2011 while researching at the University of Sussex’s Mass Observation Archive, an ongoing collection of narratives submitted by everyday British citizens since 1937.
Miller, an associate professor of English at Utah State University, has spent the past two years investigating American and British reactions to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people and launched a global war on terrorism. Using a travel grant from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, she recently ventured overseas to read the accounts of ordinary citizens to the very unordinary moment. Miller, a specialist of war literature, is studying post-9/11 British and American novels for her new research project entitled Post-9/11 British and American Literature: The Humanities and the Voice of the People.
But as the tenth anniversary approaches, it remains difficult to discern what actually qualifies as post-9/11 literature, she said.
“Just because it is written after 9/11 doesn’t mean it’s about 9/11 in an obvious way.”
She suspects enough time has not passed. The memories of four hijacked planes bringing down the World Trade Center, punching a hole in the side of the Pentagon and torching a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, are still fresh in many people’s minds.
“It’s hard when you are in the middle of it — it is hard to get perspective,” Miller said.
Much of her career has focused on studying British Literature, particularly war literature — an area that fascinates Miller because of its limitations.
“To me, it is a really intense example of what literature can do,” she said. “Written in a moment of crisis, war literature demonstrates and how people make sense of a world that doesn’t make any sense.”
In 2009, she published British Literature of the Blitz: Fighting the People's War, an analysis of the conflicting representations of class and gender found in British film and literature during World War II. The Blitz referred to a 76-day nightly bombing campaign of London by Nazi Germany. The goal was to break the British people’s spirit and the nation’s economy. By the end of the war, the Blitz failed to accomplish either aim. However, it did produce a new type of civilian experience captured in the literature of the time.
Miller’s research involved poring over hand-written entries submitted by British citizens to Mass-Organization, a social research organization founded by three men to gather an anthropological record of the country. They recruited about 500 volunteers to submit their dreams, observations and ideas to the archive. The project petered out in the 1950s before rebounding in 1981. The day after 9/11 a directive was sent to participants to keep a journal. Miller returned to the University of Sussex to read these archival materials in April.
“The most interesting thing I found was that a lot of people talked about television and the role of television in their perception of the attacks,” she said. “People kept saying, ‘It was like a movie.’”
Somehow, the idea of the attacks being carried out on television and reported on TV made it both more and less real for people who were struggling to understand the unfathomable, she said.
“That was the only metaphor that many people could come up with.”
The same phenomenon occurred when she read Columbia University’s archives. When Miller arrived she asked the librarian how long it would take to read the accounts of 9/11 contributors.
“It’s going to be really, really difficult to read that much,” was the response.
And it was. Reading the stories of the police officers and firefighters who responded to the attacks proved more daunting than she anticipated.
“It just got emotionally exhausting,” Miller said. “The individuals who contributed their stories to the archives just wanted their experiences recorded somewhere. They gave their little piece of history and hoped that someone might see how it fit into a larger pattern of meaning.”
Reviewing the transcripts showed her how difficult it is for people to describe traumatic experiences with words. That is why she turns to literature.
“You are looking at writers who are working with words to try to imagine unspeakable horror,” she said.
Authors try to convey the rawness that historical interviews provide, but with additional meaning. Miller searches for the contradictions that may help explain how a particular era really was. She has begun examining texts such as Day by Scottish author A. L. Kennedy and The Zero: A Novel by American writer Jess Walter.
But rather than just searching for broad patterns in people’s 9/11 experiences, Miller wants to share the complexity and confusion that defines their stories with others. After spending the 2010-11 year on sabbatical, she was excited to get back in the classroom to relay her research findings to students.
“To be able to share some of the individual stories is going to be really powerful,” Miller said.
Related links:
USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Contact: Kristine Miller, (435) 797-3646, kristine.miller@usu.edu
Writer: Kristen Munson, PR specialist, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, (435) 797-0267, kristen.munson@usu.edu
USU faculty member Kristine Miller read numerous accounts of 9/11. Her research looks at how the events that day are treated in literature.
USU Department of English faculty member Kristine Miller has spent the past two years investigating American and British reactions to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
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