Alan Nadel
Biographic Data
| ID | 784071 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Nadel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Nadel |
| SIGNATURE | NADEL A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Bombshell
African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990
African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990 tracks Black expressive culture in the 1980s as novelists, poets, dramatists, filmmakers, and performers grappled with the contradictory legacies of the civil rights era, and the start of culture wars and policy machinations that would come to characterize the 1990s. The volume is necessarily interdisciplinary and critically promiscuous in its methodologies and objects of study as it reconsider…
"The Movement and the "Madman
Journal Article The Movement and the “Madman.” Get access The Movement and the “Madman.” Dir. by Stephen Talbot. Prod. by Stephen Talbot and Steve Ladd. Glen Park Films for American Experience, Pbs, 2023. 82 Mins. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/movement-and-madman/). Alan Nadel Alan Nadel University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American His…
Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American LiteratureAmbiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture
Book Review| March 01 2020 Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American LiteratureAmbiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American Literature. By Park, Josephine Nock-Hee. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 2016. vii, 310 pp. Cloth, $115.00; paper, $33.95; e-book available.Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture. By Mortenson, Erik. Carbon…
After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama by Patrick Maley
Reviewed by: After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama by Patrick Maley Alan Nadel Patrick Maley. After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2019. 235 pp. $59.50. In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, then head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, was revealed to be perming her hair and wearing brown makeup in order to pass as African American, despite having neither a historical nor gen…
McCarthy
A documentary biography, like all forms of history, should attempt to synthesize details rather than merely catalog them. Ideally, it should offer an enlightening rationale for differentiating the historical subject from his or her biographical representation. Both the infamous communist-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy and the documentary McCarthy, which premiered January 6, 2020, on Pbs's American Experience series, underscore this point in diffe…
George W. Bush
It is hard to know how to start a review of a documentary so ineptly scripted as to imply that the vice president is not elected but chosen by the president after taking office, in the same way as cabinet members are. Describing President George W. Bush's second term administration, however, the narrator of George W. Bush tells us that Colin Powell resigned, but that Bush “kept on [Dick] Cheney as vice president and [Donald] Rumsfeld as secretary…
The Lavender Scare
David K. Johnson's 2004 book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, provides the basis for Josh Howard's namesake documentary, produced by Pbs. Johnson's rich and compelling book extensively documents how postwar concerns about American moral decline, combined with fears of communism, enabled a powerful class of government bureaucrats to employ a “Lavender Scare to justify a vast expansion of…
Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America
Teaching Culture
Teaching Culture Alan Nadel (bio) Throughout the history of film, plots have required that a character be rendered unconscious for a finite period with no explanation of the process and with no other consequence, to which end, the medium invented the “magic-single-punch.” All one character has to do is say: “I hate to do this but . . .” then throw a swift punch to jaw, and the recipient agrees to pass out for however long the plot requires. More …
A Partial History of American Film in the Cinematic Century
A Partial History of American Film in the Cinematic Century Alan Nadel (bio) Screen Decades: American Culture / American Cinema. Series edited by Lester D. Friedman and Murray Pomerance. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Series includes the following titles. American Cinema, 1890–1909: Themes and Variations. Edited by Andre Gaudreault. 2009. 268 pages. $70.00 (cloth). $24.95 (paper). American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variation…
Terror, Representation, and Postmodern Lessons in Hitler Studies
Terror, Representation, and Postmodern Lessons in Hitler Studies Alan Nadel (bio) Review of: Karen Engle, Seeing Ghosts: 9/11 and the Visual Imagination. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens UP, 2009. Print. Jeffrey Melnick , 9/11 Culture. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print. Marc Redfield , The Rhetoric of Terror: Reflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror. New York: Fordham UP, 2009. Print. Phillip E. Wegner , Life between Two Deaths, 19…
The a-historical actor on the historical stage: American Studies, the cultural borderline personality, and John Sayles'Lone Star
This essay contends that American Studies needs to adopt a performative approach, by considering what America does, not what it is, and what has been said and done in the name of America. Specifically, this essay examines how the Cold War cultural conditions from which American Studies emerged as a discipline isolated the disciplines in an academia that lacked a sense of its own historicity. This condition contributed to America's assuming the ro…
Shadowing Ralph Ellison
Reviewed by: Shadowing Ralph Ellison Alan Nadel (bio) Wright, John S. Shadowing Ralph Ellison. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2006. More than fifty years after its publication, Invisible Man remains a monumental work of American literature: rich, provocative, complex, and demanding. Thoroughly steeped in the panoply of literary, historical, and intellectual traditions that informed the moment of its production, it perfectly exemplifies its period. A…
May all Your Fences have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
Journal Article Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. By Alan Nadel. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. xvi, 332 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8223-1701-X. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8223-1699-4.) Get access Tom Engelhardt Tom Engelhardt Metropolitan Books, New York, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 83, Issue 3, December 1996, Pag…
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
Failed Cultural Narratives: America in the Postwar Era and the Story of Democracy
Joan Didion begins Democracy by describing the novel she had started to write but which no longer seems tenable. As she develops her notes out of the jettisoned cargo (a recurrent image in the book) of her unfinished narrative, we learn that the story she intended to write focused on the family and affairs of Inez Christian, who grew up on Hawaii just after World War II, where her family (in which the colonial impulse had marked every member1) ha…
Ralph Ellison: Writing Criticism in Indelible Ink
Speaking for You: The Vision of Ralph Ellison
Critical Essays on James Baldwin
True wit and mere vulgarity, or the art of being the student in Paul Fussell’s Class
Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the Invisible Canon
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
Journal Article Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. By Alan Nadel. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. xvi, 332 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8223-1701-X. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8223-1699-4.) Get access Tom Engelhardt Tom Engelhardt Metropolitan Books, New York, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 83, Issue 3, December 1996, Pag…
Critical Essays on James Baldwin
True wit and mere vulgarity, or the art of being the student in Paul Fussell’s Class
Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the Invisible Canon
Speaking for You: The Vision of Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison: Writing Criticism in Indelible Ink
Failed Cultural Narratives: America in the Postwar Era and the Story of Democracy
Joan Didion begins Democracy by describing the novel she had started to write but which no longer seems tenable. As she develops her notes out of the jettisoned cargo (a recurrent image in the book) of her unfinished narrative, we learn that the story she intended to write focused on the family and affairs of Inez Christian, who grew up on Hawaii just after World War II, where her family (in which the colonial impulse had marked every member1) ha…
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
Journal Article Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. By Alan Nadel. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. xvi, 332 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8223-1701-X. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8223-1699-4.) Get access Tom Engelhardt Tom Engelhardt Metropolitan Books, New York, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 83, Issue 3, December 1996, Pag…
Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
May all Your Fences have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson
The a-historical actor on the historical stage: American Studies, the cultural borderline personality, and John Sayles'Lone Star
This essay contends that American Studies needs to adopt a performative approach, by considering what America does, not what it is, and what has been said and done in the name of America. Specifically, this essay examines how the Cold War cultural conditions from which American Studies emerged as a discipline isolated the disciplines in an academia that lacked a sense of its own historicity. This condition contributed to America's assuming the ro…
Shadowing Ralph Ellison
Reviewed by: Shadowing Ralph Ellison Alan Nadel (bio) Wright, John S. Shadowing Ralph Ellison. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2006. More than fifty years after its publication, Invisible Man remains a monumental work of American literature: rich, provocative, complex, and demanding. Thoroughly steeped in the panoply of literary, historical, and intellectual traditions that informed the moment of its production, it perfectly exemplifies its period. A…
Terror, Representation, and Postmodern Lessons in Hitler Studies
Terror, Representation, and Postmodern Lessons in Hitler Studies Alan Nadel (bio) Review of: Karen Engle, Seeing Ghosts: 9/11 and the Visual Imagination. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens UP, 2009. Print. Jeffrey Melnick , 9/11 Culture. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print. Marc Redfield , The Rhetoric of Terror: Reflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror. New York: Fordham UP, 2009. Print. Phillip E. Wegner , Life between Two Deaths, 19…
Teaching Culture
Teaching Culture Alan Nadel (bio) Throughout the history of film, plots have required that a character be rendered unconscious for a finite period with no explanation of the process and with no other consequence, to which end, the medium invented the “magic-single-punch.” All one character has to do is say: “I hate to do this but . . .” then throw a swift punch to jaw, and the recipient agrees to pass out for however long the plot requires. More …
A Partial History of American Film in the Cinematic Century
A Partial History of American Film in the Cinematic Century Alan Nadel (bio) Screen Decades: American Culture / American Cinema. Series edited by Lester D. Friedman and Murray Pomerance. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Series includes the following titles. American Cinema, 1890–1909: Themes and Variations. Edited by Andre Gaudreault. 2009. 268 pages. $70.00 (cloth). $24.95 (paper). American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variation…
Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America
The Lavender Scare
David K. Johnson's 2004 book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, provides the basis for Josh Howard's namesake documentary, produced by Pbs. Johnson's rich and compelling book extensively documents how postwar concerns about American moral decline, combined with fears of communism, enabled a powerful class of government bureaucrats to employ a “Lavender Scare to justify a vast expansion of…
Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American LiteratureAmbiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture
Book Review| March 01 2020 Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American LiteratureAmbiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American Literature. By Park, Josephine Nock-Hee. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 2016. vii, 310 pp. Cloth, $115.00; paper, $33.95; e-book available.Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture. By Mortenson, Erik. Carbon…
After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama by Patrick Maley
Reviewed by: After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama by Patrick Maley Alan Nadel Patrick Maley. After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2019. 235 pp. $59.50. In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, then head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, was revealed to be perming her hair and wearing brown makeup in order to pass as African American, despite having neither a historical nor gen…
McCarthy
A documentary biography, like all forms of history, should attempt to synthesize details rather than merely catalog them. Ideally, it should offer an enlightening rationale for differentiating the historical subject from his or her biographical representation. Both the infamous communist-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy and the documentary McCarthy, which premiered January 6, 2020, on Pbs's American Experience series, underscore this point in diffe…
George W. Bush
It is hard to know how to start a review of a documentary so ineptly scripted as to imply that the vice president is not elected but chosen by the president after taking office, in the same way as cabinet members are. Describing President George W. Bush's second term administration, however, the narrator of George W. Bush tells us that Colin Powell resigned, but that Bush “kept on [Dick] Cheney as vice president and [Donald] Rumsfeld as secretary…
African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990
African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990 tracks Black expressive culture in the 1980s as novelists, poets, dramatists, filmmakers, and performers grappled with the contradictory legacies of the civil rights era, and the start of culture wars and policy machinations that would come to characterize the 1990s. The volume is necessarily interdisciplinary and critically promiscuous in its methodologies and objects of study as it reconsider…
"The Movement and the "Madman
Journal Article The Movement and the “Madman.” Get access The Movement and the “Madman.” Dir. by Stephen Talbot. Prod. by Stephen Talbot and Steve Ladd. Glen Park Films for American Experience, Pbs, 2023. 82 Mins. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/movement-and-madman/). Alan Nadel Alan Nadel University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American His…
Bombshell
History (19 works) · Art (17 works) · Literature (13 works) · Art history (12 works) · History (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Politics (7 works)