Melani McAlister

Melani McAlister specializes in the multiple “global visions” produced by and for Americans. In her writing and teaching, she focuses on the ways in which cultural and political history intersect, and on the role of religion and culture in shaping US “interests” in other parts of the world. Her own interests include nationalism and transnationalism, religion and culture, the rhetoric of foreign policy, and media history (including television, film, print, and digital).

In the fall of 2007, she will be a fellow at the Davis Center for Historical studies at Princeton University. Her courses at GW include 20th-century media and cultural history, cultural theory, US-Middle East Cultural Encounters, and The US in a Global Context. Her graduate seminars have included "Mass Media and Identity," "Cultural Theory and American Studies," and "The U.S. in a Global Context."

Prof. McAlister received her PhD from Brown University (1996) and her BA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her first book, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US Interests in the Middle East Since 1945 (Univ. of California, 2001), was re-issued in an updated and expanded edition in 2005. It was named by the Village Voice as one of its "25 Favorite Books of 2001."

She is currently working on a study of Christian evangelicals, popular culture, and foreign relations, tentatively titled, Our God in the World: The Global Visions of American Evangelicals.

In recent years, Prof. McAlister has analyzed U.S. perceptions of the Middle East in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Nation, among others, as well as in interviews with CNN, BBC, Voice of America, and NPR. She has published scholarly articles in the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, and American Literary History, among others. She is on the editorial boards of American Quarterly and Diplomatic History.

Dr. McAlister has lectured at dozens of universities across the nation and has served as a consultant and lecturer for American Studies programs and institutes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. She has also been a Fellow at the Princeton Center for the Study of Religion and a non-resident Fellow at Harvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Center.


Courses Taught

-US Media in a Global Context (graduate seminar)
-Cultural Theory and American Studies (graduate seminar)
-US-Middle East Cultural Encounters (freshman seminar)
-US Media and Cultural history (undergraduate lecture course)

Recent Publications

Books:

Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945. University of California Press, o. 2001, updated ed. 2005.

Co-editor, with R. Marie Griffith, "Religion and Politics in Contemporary America," special issue of American Quarterly, Fall 2007.
-Forthcoming as a book with Johns Hopkins University Press.

Manuscript in Process:

Our God in the World: The Global Visions of American Evangelicals

Academic Articles:

“Evangelicals and the Iraq War,” in Race, Nation, and Empire in U.S. History, ed. Matthew Guterl and James Campbell, University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2007.

“American Feminists, Global Visions, and the Problem of Female Genital Surgeries,” in Americanism: New Perspectives on The History of an Ideal, ed. Michael Kazin and Joe McCartin, University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

“Prophecy, Politics, and The Popular: The Left Behind Series and Christian Fundamentalism’s New World Order,” South Atlantic Quarterly (Fall 2003).
- Reprinted in Israel, Palestine and Popular Culture, Duke University Press, 2005.

“A Cultural History of the War Without End,” special issue on “September 11 and History,” Journal of American History 89:2 (September 2002), 439-456.
- This issue also published as a book by Temple University Press, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz, 2003.

General Interest Publications:

“An Empire of Their Own,” The Nation, September 22, 2003.

“Saving Private Lynch,” The New York Times Op-Ed page, April 6, 2003.

“Armageddon on the Bestseller List,” The Washington Post, Outlook section, February 2, 2003.


Link to Prof. McAlister's CV