• français
    • English
  • English 
    • français
    • English
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
BIRD Home

Browse

This CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsJournals BIRDResearch centres & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsJournals

My Account

Login

Statistics

View Usage Statistics

Voices of Victims of Crisis: Dave Egger's and McSweeney’s Narrative Strategies

Thumbnail
Date
2011
Dewey
Communication, medias
Sujet
Zeitoun; McSweeney's; Dave Eggers; Katrina Hurricane
Conference name
Crise et culture / Crisis and Culture
Conference date
09-2011
Conference city
Paris
Conference country
France
URI
https://basepub.dauphine.fr/handle/123456789/7291
Collections
  • CICLaS : Publications
Metadata
Show full item record
Author
Chupin, Helen
Type
Communication / Conférence
Abstract (EN)
Media coverage of crises is short-lived and, in news reports, the voices of the victims are often reduced to the dimensions of the sound-bite. This paper aims to explore how one American publishing company, McSweeney’s, owned and managed by the writer, Dave Eggers, provides a less ephemeral and more comprehensive platform where the voices of victims of crises of different types can be heard. Helen Chupin will examine in greater detail McSweeney’s role in bringing to the attention of the public the experiences of the victims of Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in 2005 and, more particularly, the fate of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American, who remained in New Orleans during the floods, and who was wrongly arrested and imprisoned, the victim of the breakdown of the system of law enforcement in the city in the aftermath of the hurricane. Two publications will be examined which present different narrative strategies but which both relate Zeitoun’s experience: Ed. Young, Chris and Vollen, Lola, Voices from the Storm, McSweeney’s/ Voice of Witness: San Francisco, 2005. Eggers, Dave, Zeitoun, McSweeney’s Books: San Francisco, 2009. Through an analysis of both texts, setting them against the background of other media representations of the crisis and, notably, of television documentaries which have continued to return to this subject over the last six years, Helen Chupin will assess the nature of the strategic choices made by each publication concerning narrative form and the effects such choices are likely to produce on the reader.

  • Accueil Bibliothèque
  • Site de l'Université Paris-Dauphine
  • Contact
SCD Paris Dauphine - Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny 75775 Paris Cedex 16

 Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 France (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.