American national identity and discourses of the frontier in early 20th century visual culture

This thesis examines the rise of image culture in the 1920’s and its impact on
American national identity. I demonstrate that, perhaps surprisingly, the central figure in
these debates was not a past or present prominent American but instead an indeterminate
Other which is read in ambivalent ways and for varied purposes. It is the central claim of
this project that in order to trace the modern American subject that emerges from the
1920s national rift, one must attend to the ways in which a felt need to view and position
oneself in relation to “the Other” was essential to defining the nature and future of the
nation. More specifically, I argue that the film Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925)
offers a solution to this national divide by providing viewers a popular culture form of
“evidence” of the Westerner’s capacity to exhibit both premodern and modern qualities.