WEEK I
May 21 Welcome Session: Introducing Orientalism and Debating The Clash Of Civilizations
1. Douglas Little, Little, Ch. 1, “Orientalism, American Style: The Middle East in the Mind of America” from American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945, 3rd Ed. (University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
2. Sophia Rose Arjana, “Introduction: Islam in the Western Imagination,” from Muslims in the Western Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2015)
3. Edward W. Said, “Islam through Western Eyes,” The Nation, April 26, 1980
4. Edward W. Said, “The Clash of Ignorance,” The Nation, October 4, 2001
5. Edward Said, “Orientalism 25 Years Later: Worldly Humanism v. the Empire-builders,” Counterpunch, August 5, 2003
May 22 Terrorism in the US Media pre-9/11
1. Melani McAlister, Ch. 5, “Iran, Islam, and the Terrorist Threat, 1979-1989,” from Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, & U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945, (University of California Press, 2005)
Media Articles
May 23 & 24 Terrorism in the US Media post-9/11
1. Sophia Rose Arjana, “Chapter 6: The Monsters of September 11th”
2. Peter Morey and Amina Yaqin, “Chapter 5. Troubling Strangers: Race, Nation, and the ‘War on Terror,’” from Television Thrillers, from Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 (Harvard University Press, 2011)
3. Jinee Lokaneeta, “A Rose by Another Name: Legal Definitions, Sanitized Terms, and Imagery of Torture in 24,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, 6(2), 2010, 245–273
4. Raffi Khatchadourian, “Azzam the American: The Making of an Al Qaeda Homegrown,” The New Yorker, January 22, 2007
5. Deepa Kumar and Arun Kundnani, “Homeland and the Imagination of National Security,” Jacobin Magazine, November 13, 2013
Media Articles
6. Jon Ronson, “You May Know Me from Such Roles as Terrorist #4,” GQ, July 28, 2015
WEEK II
May 28 & 29 ISIS, Terrorism in the US Media
Media Articles
1. Chauncey de Vega, “Yes, ISIS Burned a Man Alive: White Americans Did the Same Thing to Black People by the Thousands,” The Daily Kos, Feb 4, 2015
2. Benjamin Soloway, “Updated: Stallone Will Not Take on the Islamic State in New Movie,” Foreign Policy, July 13, 2015
3. Gustavo Arellano, “We Mexicans welcome Muslims as the new Public Enemy Number One,” The Guardian, December 10, 2015
4. Evan Soltas and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “The Rise of Hate Search,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 2015
5. Yuval Noah Harari, “Isis Is As Much an Offshoot Of Our Global Civilisation as Google,” The Guardian, September 9, 2016
May 30 Muslim-Americans & Islamophobia
1. Evelyn Sultany, “Selling Muslim American Identity,” from Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 (New York University Press, 2012)
Media Articles
1. Justin Elliott, “Arabic for Right Wingers,” Salon.com, June 16, 2011
2. Denise Spellberg, “Our Founding Fathers included Islam,” Salon.com Oct 5, 2013
3. Brendan O'Neill, “Islamophobia Is a Myth,” National Review, Jan 9, 2015
4. Conor Friedersdorf, “Islamophobia Is Not a Myth,” The Atlantic, Jan 14 2015
5. Wajahat Ali, “What I Learned Trying to Write a Muslim-American Cop Show for HBO,” The Atlantic, Feb 6, 2015
6. Hanna Allam, “Muslims Still Searching For Their ‘Cosby Show’ Moment,” McClatchy, April 26, 2016
7. Huda Al-Marashi, “Trump Thinks Muslims Don’t ‘Assimilate.’ He Should Have Met My Grandfather,” Washington Post, June 20, 2016
8. Aziz Ansari, “Why Trump Makes Me Scared for My Family,” New York Times, June 24, 2016
9. Riz Ahmed, “Typecast as a Terrorist,” The Guardian, September 15, 2016
10. George Takei, “They Interned My Family. Don’t Let Them Do It To Muslims,” Washington Post, November 18, 2016
11. Jordan Denari Duffner, “New Study: Islamophobia Common in Catholic Media,” Religion Dispatches, June 15, 2017
May 31 African-American & Latino-American Muslims in the Media
1. Melani McAlister “One Black Allah: The Middle East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation,1955-1970,” American Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 622-656
Media Articles
2. Brendan I. Koerner, “A Black Panther Guide to Algiers,” 2013
3. Souad Mekhennet, “Even The Islamists Of ISIS Are Obsessing Over Ferguson,” Washington Post, August 21, 2014
4. Keith Ellison, “I’m The First Muslim In Congress. I Believe America Can Beat Islamophobia,” Washington Post, September 10, 2016
5. Sohail Daulatzai, “The 50th Anniversary of The Battle of Algiers and the Film’s Impact on the Black Radical Imagination,” Alternet.org, October 18, 2016
6. Walter Thompson-Hernández, “‘It’s Beautiful’: How Four Los Angeles Latinos Found Peace In Islam,” Fusion, December 22, 2015
WEEK III
June 4 Christianity, Israel, the Apocalypse, & the Middle East
1. Melani McAlister “Benevolent Supremacy”: Biblical Epic Films, Suez, and the Cultural Politics of U.S. Power,” in The United States & the Middle East: Cultural Encounters, YCIAS Vol. V, pp. 194-207
Media Articles
2. Jay Michaelson, “Evangelicals & ISIS Feel Fine about the End of the World,” The Daily Beast, March 8, 2015
June 5 American Orientalism
1. Brian T. Edwards, “Yankee Pashas and Buried Women: Containing Abundance in 1950s Hollywood Orientalism,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies vol. 31, no. 2 (2001): 17.
Media Articles
2. Philip Giraldi, “Why We Hate Them: Arabs in Western Eyes,” The American Conservative, Jan 2, 2013
June 6 Middle East Oil in the US Media
1. Melani McAlister, Ch. 3, “King Tut, Commodity Nationalism, and the Politics of Oil, 1973-1979”
June 7 Music, The Middle East, & US Culture
Media Articles
1. Jonathan Curiel, “The Sounds of the '60s: How Dick Dale, the Doors, and Dylan Swayed to Arab Music,” Alternet.org, December 12, 2008
WEEK IV
June 11 Middle East in Science Fiction & Video Games
1. Vít Sisler, “Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11; 203, 2008
2. Johan Höglund, “Electronic Empire: Orientalism Revisited in the Military Shooter,” Game Studies, volume 8, issue 1, September 2008
3. Magy Seif El-Nasr, Maha Al-Saati, Simon Niedenthal, David Milam, “Assassin’s Creed: A Multi-Cultural Read,”
Media Articles
4. Spencer Ackerman, “Battlestar Iraqtica: Does The Hit Television Show Support The Iraqi Insurgency?” Slate.com, Oct 13, 2006
5. Hari Kunzru, “Dune, 50 Years On: How A Science Fiction Novel Changed The World,” The Guardian, July 3, 2015
June 12 Iran in the US Media
1. Hamid Naficy, “Mediating the Other: American Pop Culture Representation of Postrevolutionary Iran,” The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, ed. Yahya R. Kamalipour
June 13 & 14 Iraq in the US Media
1. Martin Barker, “Chapter 3, Constructing an Iraq War Experience,” from A 'Toxic Genre': The Iraq War Films, (Pluto Press, 2011)
2. J Hoberman, “Three Kings: Burn, Blast, Bomb, Cut,” Sight & Sound, Vol. 10 no. 2, Feb. 2000
3. Mark J. Lacy, “War Cinema, and Moral Anxiety,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 28, 2003
4. Marilyn B. Young, “The Hurt Locker: War as a Video Game,” Perspectives on History, November 2009
WEEK V
June 18 How Sound in American Media Constructs the Middle East
1. Corey Creekmur, “The Sound of the ‘War on Terror,’” in Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the ‘war on Terror,” eds. Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, & Karen Randell, (New York: Continuum, 2010), 83-96.
June 19, 20, 21 Muslim Women in the US Media
2. Evelyn Sultany, “Chapter 3, Evoking Sympathy for the Muslim Woman, from Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 (New York University Press, 2012)
June 22 Final Exam