Introduction: Re/presentations of Crisis in Twenty-First-Century US Literature and Culture

Abstract

Between 1776 and 1783, during the American Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine wrote a series of inspirational newspaper articles entitled The American Crisis. The first of these, “Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America on the Following Interesting Subjects...,” was famously read by George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Trenton and sold over 120,000 copies in three months. Paine’s crisis pamphlets unquestionably contributed to the forging of a new national identity as they urged settler Americans to revolt against a distant, tyrant ruler, which gave them a new sense of independence and purpose. Two centuries later, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, Barack Obama’s first speech as the forty-fourth president of the United States, delivered on January 20, 2009, defined contemporary American history in terms of national crisis and collective responsibility in a global context in which pressing economic, sociopolitical, educational, ethical, and environmental conflicts pointed at the demise of the so-called “American Century” (Smith):