Melani McAlister is Associate Professor of American Studies and International Affairs at George Washington University. Prof. McAlister is the author of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (rev. ed. 2005, orig. 2001), and the co-editor, with R. Marie Griffith, of Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States (2008).  She is currently working on a study of U.S. Christian evangelicals, popular culture, and international affairs, tentatively titled Our God in the World:  The Global Visions of American Evangelicals.

McAlister has published in a broad range of academic journals, including the Journal of American History, American Literary History, and American Quarterly.  She has also written for the Washington Post, New York Times, and The Nation, and has spoken to a broad range of media outlets about US-Middle East relations and US evangelical life and culture, including PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Irish Radio One, and national television stations in Germany, Austria, and Iran.

Prof McAlister received her PhD in American Civilization from Brown University and her BA in International Affairs from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  She has been a fellow at Princeton’s Davis Center for Historical Studies, a faculty fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, and a fellow at Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion.  She currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut.  She currently serves on the editorial board of American Quarterly and in 2012 will join the board of the Journal of American History.