Commemorative Impulses in the "Heart of America": Kansas City, the Great War, and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

The article examines Theodore Dreiser’s depiction of Kansas City in his novel *An American Tragedy* as an extended ironic commentary on post-World War I commemorative culture in the United States. It situates Kansas City as a national epicenter of war memorialization, notably through the Liberty Memorial, while highlighting how Dreiser’s narrative spatially and thematically critiques the era’s dominant commemorative impulses of unity, glory, and victory by foregrounding unrest, grief, and violence. The analysis emphasizes Dreiser’s deliberate silences regarding the war and its aftermath, revealing the marginalization of women’s mourning and the inequities faced by veterans and minority communities in postwar memorial culture. By applying spatial humanities concepts, the article argues that Dreiser’s Kansas City represents a “real-and-imagined” commemorative space that challenges official narratives and reflects the complex, often painful legacies of the Great War.