Part I. Interrogating the American "passion for the real": Witnessing the fall: September 11 and the crisis of the permeable self / Christine Muller; Perpetual media wars: the cultural front in the wars on terror and drugs / Todd Schack; Boring is the new interesting : September 11, realness, and the politics of authenticity in pop music / Em McAvan; Representing the real on The road to Guantanamo / Meghan Gibbons
Part II. "Back to basics": reaffirming national myths: Tom Clancy, 24, and the language of autocracy / Matthew B. Hill; Lost
a post-September 11, post-oedipal American Jeremiad / Mathias Nilges; "People have had enough tragedy": the spectacle of global heroism in Superman returns / Justine Toh; Deal with it, sort of: the picture-book treatment of September 11 / Katie Sciurba
Part III. Embracing the complexity: deconstructing the war on terror: A day that will live in irony: September 11 and the war on humor / Sean Zwagerman; "I could smell the dawn of Armageddon when this dick was elected": hip-hop's oppositional voices in the war on terror / Paul Williams; Attack of the livid dead: recalibrating terror in the post-September 11 zombie film / Nick Muntean and Matthew Thomas Payne; Interrogating the manipulation of fear: V for vendetta, Batman begins, Good night, & good luck, and America's "war on terror" / Andrew Schopp.