Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024)

Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024)

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State (Penn State University Press, 2024), Dr. Barbara A. Biesecker explores the prestige and rhetorical power of the “Good War,” revealing how it was retooled to restore a new kind of social equilibrium to the United States. Biesecker analyzes prominent cases of World War II remembrance, including the canceled exhibit of the Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum in 1995 and its replacement, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Situating these popular memory texts within the culture and history wars of the day and the broader framework of US political and economic life, Dr. Biesecker argues that, with the notable exception of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, these reinventions of the Good War worked rhetorically to restore a strong sense of national identity and belonging fitted to the neoliberal nationalist agenda. By tracing the links between the popular retooling of World War II and the national state fantasy, and by putting the lessons of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, and their successors to work for a rhetorical-political analysis of the present, Dr. Biesecker not only explains the emergence and strength of the MAGA movement but also calls attention to the power of public memory to shape and contest ethnonational identity today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

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Nina Wilen, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Nina Wilen, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025)

The Sahel has become a focal point of international security interventions, with external actors providing extensive security force assistance (SFA) to local military, police, and paramilitary forces....

25 Marras 202552min

Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)

Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are no...

24 Marras 202559min

John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021)

John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021)

September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but the attacks of that day also re-ignited battles over the nature of American patriotism. In Divided by Terror: American Pat...

22 Marras 20251h 8min

Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025)

Tim Seiter, "Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios" (U Texas Press, 2025)

A richly detailed history of daily life for colonial Spanish soldiers surviving on the eighteenth-century Texas Gulf Coast. In 1775, Spanish King Carlos III ordered the capture of American pelicans f...

19 Marras 202539min

John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)

John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)

In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The castle has long had a pi...

17 Marras 202556min

Jennifer Yip, "Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Jennifer Yip, "Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

How did China’s Nationalists feed their armies during the long war against Japan? In her new book, Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945 (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jenni...

15 Marras 202555min

Sonia Faleiro, "The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Sonia Faleiro, "The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia" (Columbia UP, 2025)

When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence? We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the rob...

14 Marras 202541min

David Kieran, "Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis" (NYU Press, 2019)

David Kieran, "Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis" (NYU Press, 2019)

The surprising story of the Army's efforts to combat PTSD and traumatic brain injury The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Se...

14 Marras 202550min

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