Storytelling, Myth, and the Dreams Therein: A Critical Analysis of the Intertextuality of Christianity, Capitalism, and Americanism

This dissertation, while dealing with many aspects of Americanism, argues that the hegemonic history of Christianity in America and the centrality of capitalism in national ethos have contributed to an impulse in the national psyche towards illusion. I argue that due to this impulse and privileging of illusion, and/or various ‘realities’, over actuality, much American violence takes place both within and without the nation’s borders. I demonstrate the harmful but seldom examined paradoxes produced and sustained by treating American values as sacrosanct in American life and in individual American lives, despite the varying definitions of those values along the spectrum of political and religious belief, the ways they are interpreted, and the manners in which they are executed.

Underpinning my examination of the intertextualization of Christianity and Americanism, are queer theory, postmodern theory, and critical race theory, thereby employing theoretical perspectives that are not strictly associated with benefitting examinations of Christianity or Americanism, which is to say that these perspectives can broaden our appreciation of the outcomes of intertextuality.