Post-Prelim Progress

Well, now that I'm post-prelim written exams, and I face the oral exams next week, I've been thinking about the application of a post-9/11 rhetoric in the classroom. I need to think about and research rhetorics within media that are distinctly 9/11. I think that my initial definitions will suffice in decribing the categories and the working definition is ok in that it says this rhetoric is that which was a result of 9/11. However, I need to make some distinctions of how these rhetoric(s) are any different from or similar to any other response-type rhetoric, and I think, visually, of course, it's easy to identify 9/11 rhetorics, but it's not so easy to locate in other media. In music, of course, the rhetorics are similar to other "wartime" music, but the images evoked are somewhat different. And, of course the concept of news is changing - the ticker tape on the bottom of the screen - trusting the blog as a news source, etc. So, I'm struggling here with the validity of calling it a 9/11 rhetoric and distinguishing it from any other post-process pedagogy (I still need to do more here), except in the fact that it's more multi-modal and multi-perspective than others that I've researched so far.
Then, I have to figure out how all of this can fit viably into a critical pedagogy with the overall intention of increasing civic literacy. After I do all of this, I need to figure out a methodology, a stronger theoretical framework, and an over all prospectus for my dissertation - this is all pending on whether or not this has all been in vain.