The imagination of atomic or nuclear disaster haunts the United States and has been a persistent motif in American novels and films, especially as concerns New York. Referencing historical, fictional, and filmic representations, Professor Torgovnick will uncover the changing terms of such representations over the decades and their implications for the aesthetic, ethical, and political imagination. What does it mean that the bombings of World War II rather rarely figure in such works? What is the persistent lure of destruction? And what does it have to do with New York? The lecture will be illustrated by film clips and examples, some of them today quite rare.
