Results by title

138 books match the query 'Minority Studies' and 2 start with e

cover of Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State

Empire's Endgame

Racism and the British State

Gargi Bhattacharyya

Pluto Press, 2021

We are in a moment of profound overlapping crises. The landscape of politics and entitlement is being rapidly and unpredictably remade. As movements against colonial legacies and state violence coincide with the rise of new authoritarian regimes, it is the analytical lens of racism, and the politics of race, that offers the sharpest focus. In Empire's Endgame, eight leading scholars make a powerful collective intervention in debates around racial capitalism and political crisis in the British context. While the 'Hostile Environment' policy and Brexit Referendum have thrown the centrality of race into sharp relief, discussions of racism have too often focused on individual attitudes and behaviors. Foregrounding instead the wider political and economic context, the authors of Empire's Endgame trace the ways in which the legacies of empire have been reshaped by global capitalism, the digital environment and the instability of the nation-state. Engaging with contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, Empire's Endgame offers both an original perspective on race, media, the state and criminalization, and a vision of a political infrastructure that might include rather than expel in the face of crisis.
[more]
cover of Evil Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear

Evil Arabs in American Popular Film

Orientalist Fear

By Tim Jon Semmerling

University of Texas Press, 2006

2006 — Runner-up, Arab American National Museum Book Awards

The "evil" Arab has become a stock character in American popular films, playing the villain opposite American "good guys" who fight for "the American way." It's not surprising that this stereotype has entered American popular culture, given the real-world conflicts between the United States and Middle Eastern countries, particularly since the oil embargo of the 1970s and continuing through the Iranian hostage crisis, the first and second Gulf Wars, and the ongoing struggle against al-Qaeda. But when one compares the "evil" Arab of popular culture to real Arab people, the stereotype falls apart. In this thought-provoking book, Tim Jon Semmerling further dismantles the "evil" Arab stereotype by showing how American cultural fears, which stem from challenges to our national ideologies and myths, have driven us to create the "evil" Arab Other.

Semmerling bases his argument on close readings of six films (The Exorcist, Rollover, Black Sunday, Three Kings, Rules of Engagement, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut), as well as CNN's 9/11 documentary America Remembers. Looking at their narrative structures and visual tropes, he analyzes how the films portray Arabs as threatening to subvert American "truths" and mythic tales—and how the insecurity this engenders causes Americans to project evil character and intentions on Arab peoples, landscapes, and cultures. Semmerling also demonstrates how the "evil" Arab narrative has even crept into the documentary coverage of 9/11. Overall, Semmerling's probing analysis of America's Orientalist fears exposes how the "evil" Arab of American popular film is actually an illusion that reveals more about Americans than Arabs.

[more]