David Lynch and American Empire
This proposed panel for ASA 2025 seeks scholarly papers that explore David Lynch’s work through the lens of American Empire. In keeping with the conference theme (“Late-Stage American Empire”), this panel will explore Lynch’s work in political, historical, and geographic terms, building upon and departing from the psychological framework so frequently evoked in Lynch criticism and scholarship. What can be gained from investigating Lynch’s work as a reflection and interrogation of American empire? How might his depictions of the Harkonnens in Dune, for instance, represent the global avarice of post-war America?