Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since1945
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...
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"A wonderfully original and compelling study, essential for understanding the complex relations between the US and the nations and peoples of the Mideast. McAlister argues powerfully that American interests in the Mideast range far beyond the realm of foreign policy to become of paramount importance to the creation of American culture in the post World War II era. . . . A model for those interested in the interconnections of culture and foreign policy in an era of globalization. An engrossing read."—Amy Kaplan, author of The Social Construction of American Realism"Melani McAlister has written a marvelous book that draws together a vast array of materials from the media, archives, scholarly sources, and popular culture, interpreting it through her rich knowledge of cultural studies. Scholars in many fields—American studies, sociology, religious studies, political science, media studies, among others—will want to read this lively and engaging book."—Robert Wuthnow, author of After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s, and Creative Spirituality: The Way of the Artist"A fascinating and completely original analysis of the relation between culture and foreign policy. . . this book casts entirely new light on US military, financial, and emotional investments in the Middle East. Conservative Christian sensibilities, television, Biblical epics, Black Power, and a host of gender-related representations—these and other factors all played a part in the shaping of American foreign policy in ways that have never before been noticed. No historian of twentieth-century American culture or politics should miss this brilliant book!"—Gail Bederman, author of Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the US, 1880-1917"Diplomatic historians are now turning to Edward Said's Orientalism to explore the cultural dimensions of 20th Century America's representations of the Middle East. They are too late! Melani McAlister develops a "post-orientalist" approach to U.S. culture, foreign policy, and identity. Hers is also the first book ever to recognize that African -Americans matter to such a project. Epic Encounters is a blockbuster of a book."—Robert Vitalis, author of When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt
Introduction : Middle East interests11"Benevolent supremacy" : the biblical epic at the dawn of the American century, 1947-1960432The Middle East in African American cultural politics, 1955-1972843King Tut, commodity nationalism, and the politics of oil, 1973-19791254The good fight : Israel after Vietnam, 1972-19801555Iran, Islam, and the terrorist threat, 1979-19891986Military multiculturalism in the Gulf War and after, 1990-1999235Conclusion : 9/11 and after : snapshots on the road to empire266
