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Reading Differently After 9/11
How life at the university was different after September 11, 2001
In the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history, operatives of Al-Queda flew airline passenger jets into the north and south towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Center; related attacks occurred elsewhere. More than 9,000 people were killed or injured. The following remarks were written shortly after those events.
If I can speak on behalf of others, the events of September 11, 2001, have increased Americans’ sense of vulnerability. In the words of a song by Sting now associated with these events, we have come to learn “How fragile we are.”
Since 9/11, our lives have been different at the university: we read and teach differently. Now, for example, students seem genuinely moved when they read Homer’s description of Hector’s farewell to his family before he leaves to fight the Greeks at the gates of Troy, more sympathetic when they hear about the victims of wartime atrocities.
I teach Children’s Literature to university students in San Diego; and just as much as September 11, tragedies in this city a few months later have made even more poignant our investigations of children’s lives. In March, seven-year-old Michelle van Dam was abducted; and in April, two-year-old Jahi Turner disappeared from a city…
