ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the transnational heroization of the New York Fire Department (NYFD). The reputation of the NYFD increased to global proportions in the aftermath of 9/11, but as the chapter shows, it had reached transnational proportions already in the nineteenth century. It argues that the construction of New York firemen’s heroic reputation—which has inspired firemen around the globe—crucially depended on the circulation of popular cultural texts, including stage melodramas, films, comics, and popular histories, as well as material objects, such as toys. In the heroic narratives that the NYFD inspires in the United States and Europe, elements of traditional notions of the heroic (e.g., superhuman feats) exist side by side with republican ideas about humility and civic duty.
