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Melani McAlister

Associate Professor of American Studies and International Affairs

On Leave, Academic Year 2009-10

1957 E Street, NW Suite 512

Washington, D.C. 20052

Phone: (202) 994-6073
Fax: (202) 994-5477
E-mail: mmc@gwu.edu

Education:

Ph.D., Brown University

Expertise:

U.S.-Middle East (1945-present); especially cultural encounters; U.S. religious right and foreign policy; culture and globalization

Background:

Melani McAlister is Associate Professor of American Studies and International Affairs at George Washington University. She received her PhD from Brown University (1996) and her BA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In fall 2007, she will be a fellow at Princeton's Davis Center for Historical Studies.

Professor McAlister writes and teaches about U.S. cultural history, cultural theory, the United States in a global context, and religion. She is the author of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (University of California Press, rev. ed. 2005, orig. 2001). She is co-editor, with R. Marie Griffith, of Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States (Johns Hopkins University Press 2008). Her recent articles include: "Evangelicals and the Iraq War," in Race, Nation, and Empire in U.S. History, ed. Matthew Guterl and James Campbell (Univ. of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2007); and "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 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2006).

In recent years 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, The New York Times, al-Jazeera, Voice of America, and NPR. She has published scholarly articles in the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, American Literary History, and the South Atlantic Quarterly. She is on the editorial boards of American Quarterly and Diplomatic History.

Professor McAlister has lectured widely in the United States and has served as a consultant and lecturer for American Studies programs and institutes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.

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.

Courses Taught:

AmSt 269 U.S. Cultural History
AmSt 289 U.S. in the World
AmSt 289 Culture and Globalization
AmSt 289 The 1970s

Last update: 8/25/2009