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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Taleb, Hala Abu. "GENDER, MEDIA, CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE EAST," American Studies, Washington State University, May 2009. Advisor: Victor Villanueva
In this study, I attempt to explore the aesthetic frameworks through which Arabs and Muslims are mainly being culturally and politically promoted today. Through analyzing various artistic and visual works, I underline the political process of Other’s identity constructions, which are generally underestimated due to the artistic nature of most of media’s negative productions. A shrewd understanding of the cultural and political manipulations of our realities, facilitated by the aesthetic politics, would help in the comprehension of the current, and almost universal, Other position of Arabic and Islamic cultures. Historically, the deformations of these nations has been utilized to justify colonialism and political exploitation of the masses. It often served to distinguish the good western Self from the ugly eastern Other and further legitimize racial superiority and political authority. The involvement of the image within such discourses maintains the cultural estrangements within the consciousness of both eastern and western masses. The aesthetic creations of some of these visuals seem to work hand in hand with various power games and political calculations that till now continue to maneuver what we know as truth. As I conclude this project, I emphasize my argument for broadly politicizing the aesthetic as a key player in the political calculations of diminishing many Others as ideologically and culturally different. By emphasizing the crucial role of media, images, and other artistic domains, Arab and Muslim artists are shifting their resistance efforts towards the aesthetic. Exposing the political twists hidden within artistic works seems an urgent patriotic re-action. More and more, challenging the national and international image formulations and eventually the political fixations seems a more appealing resistance methods for many of them today. War of arts promotes alleviated beauty as an alternative to the bloody resistance evoked by the arts of war.
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