Writing Place

This was a highly readable essay. You illustrated the transition of the World Trade Centre as a place of fear to a place of humour with excellent examples (your discussion of the Wonder Shozen and South Park episodes was particularly effective). You also placed your historical narrative into a broader context, showing its relationship to political opportunism and the psychology of responses to disaster.

It would have been good, however, to expand the quantity and breadth of your secondary material. You referred to the idea of sacred place without any reference to the huge no. of discussions about it, for example, and you also glossed over the fact that many Americans still abhor the idea of regarding the site humorously. More acknowledgment of the range of continuing responses to the site would have added a little more complexity here. But as I said, this was nonetheless a fascinating read.