ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Alaska's transformation of place in news production during the mid-twentieth century, when the American narrative encountered the 49th state in a way not previously experienced. The visual discourse analysis considers the Second World War's Aleutian Islands campaign and the opening of the Cold War's northernmost theater in relation to the rhetorical tone and political contours of a nation at war. Using archived articles and photographs from Life Magazine, the chapter analyzes how Alaska was contextualized by the media within a space of American nationalism and militarism. In doing so, it offers a critical analysis of the important but often overlooked power of visual narratives in the construction of Alaska as a politicized space of strategic and cultural nationalism in the American imagination in the decades before statehood in 1959.
