Muslims in the Media and Popular Culture

Since the long amorphous War on Terror, Muslims have been a constant presence in Western news media, typically cast in a negative light as political others who are backwards, threatening, and inherently prone to violence. This pattern has long been replicated in films where Muslims are static and dehumanized perpetrators of violence, or as symbols of a backwards and depraved culture, antithetical to liberal values and interests. In recent years however, Muslims have become increasingly visible in the American and British entertainment industries, as protagonists and producers of their own media, including G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel, Hulu’s Ramy, and Netflix’s Man Like Mobeen. In this seminar, we explore a selection of recent American and British media projects created by Muslim writers, actors, musicians, and comedians. We pair these projects with scholarship on religion in the media and TV studies analyzing Muslim representation and storytelling in contemporary popular culture. We will evaluate these works on their own terms, noting the ways in which gender and racial hierarchies dictate who gets to represent American and British Muslims, while also assessing how these new media both disrupt and further reify Muslims’ construction as religious and political outsiders.

Course History:

Spring 2021: Taught by Professor Tazeen Ali