Download or read book Epic Encounters written by Melani McAlister and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epic Encounters examines how popular culture has shaped the ways Americans define their "interests" in the Middle East. In this innovative book—now brought up-to-date to include 9/11 and the Iraq war—Melani McAlister argues that U.S. foreign policy, while grounded in material and military realities, is also developed in a cultural context. American understandings of the region are framed by narratives that draw on religious belief, news media accounts, and popular culture. This remarkable and pathbreaking book skillfully weaves lively and accessible readings of film, media, and music with a rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy, race politics, and religious history. The new chapter, titled "9/11 and After: Snapshots on the Road to Empire," considers and brilliantly analyzes five images that have become iconic: (1) New York City firemen raising the American flag out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, (2) the televised image of Osama bin-Laden, (3) Afghani women in burqas, (4) the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad, and (5) the hooded and wired prisoner in Abu Ghraib. McAlister's singular achievement is to illuminate the contexts of these five images both at the time they were taken and as they relate to current events, an accomplishment all the more remarkable since—to paraphrase her new preface—we are today struggling to look backward at something that is still rushing ahead.
Download or read book American Studies Encounters the Middle East written by Alex Lubin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-08-24 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the field of American studies, attention is shifting to the long history of U.S. engagement with the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of war in Iraq and in the context of recent Arab uprisings in protest against economic inequality, social discrimination, and political repression. Here, Alex Lubin and Marwan M. Kraidy curate a new collection of essays that focuses on the cultural politics of America's entanglement with the Middle East and North Africa, making a crucial intervention in the growing subfield of transnational American studies. Featuring a diverse list of contributors from the United States, the Arab world, and beyond, American Studies Encounters the Middle East analyzes Arab-American relations by looking at the War on Terror, pop culture, and the influence of the American hegemony in a time of revolution. Contributors include Christina Moreno Almeida, Ashley Dawson, Brian T. Edwards, Waleed Hazbun, Craig Jones, Osamah Khalil, Mounira Soliman, Helga Tawil-Souri, Judith E. Tucker, Adam John Waterman, and Rayya El Zein.
Download or read book Turkey s Relations with the Middle East written by Hüseyin Işıksal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines contemporary political relations between Turkey and the Middle East. In the light of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, the Syria Crisis, the escalation of regional terrorism and the military coup attempt in Turkey, it illustrates the dramatic fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy towards key Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The contributors analyze Turkey’s deepening involvement in Middle Eastern regional affairs, also addressing issues such as terrorism, social and political movements and minority rights struggles. While these problems have traditionally been regarded as domestic matters, this book highlights their increasingly regional dimension and the implications for the foreign affairs of Turkey and countries in the Middle East.
Download or read book American Encounters with Arabs written by William A. Rugh and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-11-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For sixty years, U.S. government officials have conducted public diplomacy programs to try to reach Arab public opinion—to inform, educate, and understand Arab attitudes. American public affairs officers have met serious challenges in the past, but Arab public criticism of the United States has reached unprecedented levels since September 11, 2001. Polls show that much of the negative opinion of the United States, especially in the Middle East, can be traced to dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy. Rugh, a retired career Foreign Service officer who twice served as ambassador to countries in the region, explains how U.S. government officials have dealt with key problem issues over the years, and he recommends ways that public diplomacy can better support and enhance U.S. national interests in the Middle East. This struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab world, so crucial to the success of American efforts in post-occupation Iraq, is carried out through broadcasting, cultural contacts, and educational and professional exchanges. Rugh describes the difference between public diplomacy and propaganda. He points out that public diplomacy uses open means of communication and is truthful. Its four main components are explaining U.S. foreign policy to foreign publics; presenting them with a fair and balanced picture of American society, culture, and institutions; promoting mutual understanding; and advising U.S. policy makers on foreign attitudes. Public diplomacy supports the traditional diplomatic functions of official business between governments. Whereas diplomats from the United States deal with diplomats of foreign governments, public affairs officers deal with opinion leaders such as media editors, reporters, academics, student leaders, and prominent intellectuals and cultural personalities. Rugh provides an up-close-and-personal look at how public affairs officers do their jobs, how they used innovation in their efforts to meet the challenges of the past, and how they continue to do so in the post-September 11 era.
Download or read book Power Faith and Fantasy America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present written by Michael B. Oren and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-02-17 with total page 1178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Will shape our thinking about America and the Middle East for years.”—Christopher Dickey, Newsweek Power, Faith, and Fantasytells the remarkable story of America's 230-year relationship with the Middle East. Drawing on a vast range of government documents, personal correspondence, and the memoirs of merchants, missionaries, and travelers, Michael B. Oren narrates the unknown story of how the United States has interacted with this vibrant and turbulent region.
Download or read book The Middle East and Globalization written by Stephan Stetter and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-12-23 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle East and Globalization discusses past and contemporary political, societal, economic, and cultural trends in the Middle East against the background of comprehensive theories of globalization. The chapters draw on a shared methodological approach, looking at the fractures and horizons of globalization that are shaping the Middle East.
Download or read book Sexual Encounters in the Middle East written by Derek Hopwood and published by ISBS. This book was released on 2006 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, now available in paperback, is a fascinating study of a hitherto neglected topic: the way in which British, French, and Arab men and women related to each other sexually, primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. In examining sexual perceptions propagated in travel writing, paintings, and novels together with sexual experiences of individuals, the author argues that sexual attitudes have deeply influenced Euro-Arab relationships in the past and still do so today. Sexual attitudes and proclivities affected the ways in which people reacted to each other and, perhaps more controversially, influenced the course of history. Inherited sexual ideas colored everyday relations in the Middle East and the relationships of Arabs in Europe. The book also examines how modern Arab writers have treated Euro-Arab sexual relations in their many novels and short stories.
Download or read book Encounters with the Middle East written by Nesreen Khashan and published by Travelers' Tales. This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 30 rich, engaging travel stories that capture uplifting scenes from everyday life and deliver sensitive, bittersweet renderings of people and landscapes often shaken by conflict. This book features original takes on commonplace "things to do" for the traveler in the Middle East--from marveling at the brilliance of the bazaars to drifting down the Nile in a felucca. It also provides intimate portrayals of people and traditions too often absent from books on the region.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Cultural Encounters in the Arab World written by Tarik Sabry and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, Tarik Sabry is seeking out the terrain for best understanding the experience of being modern in transitional societies. He adopts a dynamic, ethnographically based approach to the meanings of 'modernness' in the Arab context and, within a relational framework, focuses on structures of thought, everydayness and self-referentiality to explore the process of building a bridge that rejoins the 'modern' in Arab thought with the 'modern' in Arab lived experience. In bringing together modernity as a philosophical category with the bridging spaces of Arab everyday life, Sabry is offering fresh methods of comprehending the question of what it means to be modern in the Arab world today.
Download or read book Iran in the Middle East written by Houchang Chehabi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iran's interaction with its neighbours is a topic of wide interest. But while many historical studies of the country concentrate purely on political events and high-profile actors, this book takes the opposite approach: writing history from below, it instead focuses on the role of everyday lives. Modern Iranian historiography has been dominated by ideas of nationalism, modernization, religion, autocracy, revolution and war. Iran in the Middle East adds new dimensions to the study of four crucial areas of Iranian history: the events and impact of the Constitutional Revolution, Iran's transnational connections, the social history of Iran and developments in historiography.
Download or read book The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday written by Neil MacFarquhar and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since his boyhood in Qadhafi's Libya, Neil MacFarquhar has developed a counterintuitive sense that the Middle East, despite all the bloodshed in its recent history, is a place of warmth, humanity, and generous eccentricity. In this book, he introduces a cross-section of unsung, dynamic men and women pioneering political and social change. There is the Kuwaiti sex therapist in a leather suit with matching red headscarf, and the Syrian engineer advocating a less political interpretation of the Koran. MacFarquhar interacts with Arabs and Iranians in their every day lives, removed from the violence we see constantly, yet wrestling with the region's future. These are people who realize their region is out of step with the world and are determined to do something about it - on their own terms.
Download or read book Arab Representations of the Occident written by Rasheed El-Enany and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one of the first books in English to explore Arab responses to Western culture and values in modern Arab literature. Through in-depth research El-Enany examines the attitudes as expressed mainly through works of fiction written by Arab authors during the twentieth, and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth century. It constitutes an original addition to the age-old East-West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West. Alongside raising highly topical questions about stereotypical ideas concerning Arabs and Muslims in general, the book explores representations of the West by the foremost Arab intellectuals over a two-century period, up to the present day, and will appeal to those with an interest in Islam, the Middle East, nationalism and the so-called ‘Clash of Civilizations’.
Download or read book Middle Eastern Encounters written by Marcus Milwright and published by Gorgias Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book focuses on interactions between the Islamic world and other regions from the late eighth to the twenty-first centuries. Some chapters consider the complex relationship between Islam and the cultures of Late Antiquity in the Middle East and Mediterranean basin. The reprinted chapters in this volume have been revised and updated. Topics include relief-moulded pottery production in Raqqa, the construction of palaces in Samarra, portraiture in Arabic manuscript painting, written descriptions of patterned marble in medieval Islam, images of Muslim rulers in early Modern printed books, and the broadcast of the medical examination of Saddam Hussein. Also included are a critical introduction that considers the challenges involved in the study of cultural interactions between Islamic and non-Islamic regions, a cumulative bibliography, and a previously unpublished study of recently discovered photographs, drawings, and writings relating to the Middle East made by soldiers during and after World War I"--
Download or read book Embracing the Divine written by Akram Fouad Khater and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hndiyya al-'Ujaimi, a young eighteenth-century nun whose faith was matched by her ambition and intellect, lies at the heart of this absorbing history of Middle Eastern Christianity. At the age of twenty-six, Hindiyya left her hometown of Aleppo to establish a convent in the mountains of Lebanon. Her order and her growing public profile as a visionary and living saint met with stiff opposition from Latin missionaries and with mistrust from the Vatican. Church authorities were suspicious of feminine spirituality and independent religious authority, eventually subjecting her to two Inquisitions by the Vatican. Sentenced to spend her entire life imprisoned, Hindiyya died in 1798 in her cell, leaving a legacy that shaped the church for many years to come. Compelling in its cinematic scope—resplendent with the requisite villains and mysterious events infused with sinister and sexual tensions, tragedy, and pathos—Hindiyya’s story holds within its folds a larger tale about the construction of a new Christianity in the Levant. Khater skillfully reveals what her story tells us about religious minorities in the Middle East, early modern cultural encounters between the West and the Middle East, and the relationship between gender, modernity, and religion.
Download or read book Cultural Conversions written by Heather J. Sharkey and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume study cultural conversions that arose from missionary activities in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries effected changes that often went beyond what they had intended, sometimes backfiring against the missions. These changes entailed wrenching political struggles to redefine families, communities, and lines of authority. This volume’s contributors examine the meanings of "conversion" for individuals and communities in light of loyalties and cultural traditions, and consider how conversion, as a process, was often ambiguous. The history of Christian missions emerges from these pages as an integral part of world history that has stretched beyond professing Christians to affect the lives of peoples who have consciously rejected or remained largely unaware of missionary appeals.
Download or read book American Missionaries and the Middle East written by Middle East Studies Association of North America. Annual Meeting and published by Utah Turkish and Islamic Stud. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History of the way nineteenth and early twentieth century American missionaries affected future U.S.-Middle East relations.
Download or read book Crisis and Crossfire written by Peter L. Hahn and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a concise and insightful introduction to the turbulent history of U.S.-Middle East relations
