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by: Melani McAlister  List Price: $21.95 Amazon.com's Price: $19.75 You Save: $2.20 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 327.5607309045 EAN: 9780520244993 Edition: 2 ISBN: 0520244990 Label: University of California Press Manufacturer: University of California Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 426 Publication Date: July 05, 2005 Publisher: University of California Press Studio: University of California Press Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: 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. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Excellent exploration of cultural and social identityAn incredibly good book. McAlister dissects and analyzes the representations of the Middle East in various media -- movies, news, plays, books, etc. -- and their relationships to the projection of US global power and the shaping of US cultural identity since the end of World War II. As she puts it, her goal is to address the absence of culture from discussions of the history of US imperialism, the absence of empire from discussions of US culture, and the absence of the US from discussions of postcolonial ... Read More 
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