A sweeping, essential analysis of how, following 9/11, Middle Eastern Studies was transformed in the service of Empire

Middle East Studies after September 11: Neo-Orientalism, American Hegemony and Academia describes the complex relationship between American academia and state government: a relationship which has influenced and restructured the state, society and politics in the Middle East as well as in the United States.

Bringing the rich terrain of Arab American histories to bear on conceptualizations of race in the United States, this groundbreaking volume fills a critical gap in the field of U.S. racial and ethnic studies. The articles collected here highlight emergent discourses on the distinct ways that race matters to the study of Arab American histories and experiences and asks essential questions. What is the relationship between U.S. imperialism in Arab homelands and anti-Arab racism in the United States? In what ways have the axes of nation, religion, class, and gender intersected with Arab American racial formations? What is the significance of whiteness studies to Arab American studies? Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply added on the category “Arab-American” to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than as a beginning, in Arab Americans’

Afterword: Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge -- Appendix: Producing Knowledge on World Regions: Overview of Data Collection and Project Methodology, 2000-Present -- About the Contributors -- Index

Despite having been active in the region since the mid-1990s, the role of NATO in the Middle East has attracted particular attention since the events of 11th September 2001. This book analyses the limits of NATO’s role in the Middle East region and examines whether or not the Alliance is able to help in improving the fragile regional security environment through cooperative links with select Middle Eastern partners. The author reviews the strategic importance of the region from a Western perspective and why it has become a source of instability in world politics, looks at US and international initiatives to counteract this instability, and charts the development of NATO in this context. He also examines NATO’s role with regard to two pressing Middle Eastern crises, Iraq and Darfur, assessing whether or not this role has been consistent with, if not an expression of, US strategic interests. A comprehensive examination of the impacts of 9-11 events on world security and the development of NATO’s role in the Middle East, this book will be an important addition to the existing literature on security and strategic affairs, US foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, European politics, and terrorism studies.

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.

Media, War and Terrorism analyses, for the first time, responses to the events of 9/11 and it's repercussions from the point of view of Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Perhaps controversially, the contributors argue that while the US, and to an extent European, media seems largely unified in their coverage and silence in public debate of the events surrounding the attacks on the World Trade Centre, there exists open, critical debate in other parts of the world. By examining the use of media as an instrument of warfare and analyzing the construction of public opinion in mediated electronic warfare, this book clearly shows the difference in perspectives between public opinion in the US and the rest of the world. Moving away from popular assumptions that societies in the West are democratic and progressive and those in the Middle East and Asia are either authoritarian or under-developed, this examination of the media in those countries suggests the exact opposite. In combining an examination of the general, theoretical issues concerning the use of the media as an instrument of warfare with rich, geographically diverse case studies, the editors are able to provide a diverse and intriguing analysis of the impact and inter-connectedness of national and global medias. Bringing together contributions from academics, journalists and media practioners from all over the world, Media, War and Terrorism is an essential read for all of those seeking an informed, non-Western perspective on the events following 9/11.