Monday, October 28, 2002, 6-8PM

CUNY Graduate Center, Room 9206

The Center for Media and Learning and the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center host a conversation among scholars to explore the ways that Americans do—and do not—understand the cultures, histories, and politics of the region defined as the Middle East. What role do cultural productions play in shaping American understandings of the Middle East? What about Americans’ claims to natural resources there and perceptions of the region as the birthplace of three major religions? How has the growth of the Middle Eastern diaspora in the U.S. and the ways that Middle Eastern immigrants and Americans of Middle Eastern descent have negotiated their dual national identities shaped American perceptions of the Middle East?

Participants include:

Melani McAllister, Assistant Professor of American Studies at The George Washington University and the author of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000.

Ammiel Alcalay is Professor of Classical, Middle Eastern, and Asian Languages at Queens College, CUNY, and author of After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture and Memories of Our Future.

Moustafa Bayoumi (Moderator), Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and co-editor of The Edward Said Reader.

This program is part of the 2002 State Humanities Month, a celebration sponsored each October by the New York Council for the Humanities.