The Stories We Told Ourselves: Community Narratives about the "War on Terror".
Black, Arab, Asian and Muslim encounters with the US 'War on Terror’ are seldom reflected in American mainstream media narratives. This oral history workshop, hosted by GW’s Institute for Middle East Studies and designed by The Muslim Counterpublics Lab and researchers from Syracuse University and University of Illinois-Chicago, will demonstrate how to gather, articulate and share our own experiences of the War on Terror and its aftermath. What stories do you, your parents, children, friends and neighbors have about our post-9/11 lives? What are the best techniques for conducting interviews and how do we design compelling questions? How can we collect these stories and use them to formulate our own counternarratives? Come reflect and learn with us!
Dr. Maha Hilal (Muslim Counterpublics Lab), Professor Nausheen Husain (Syracuse University) and Professor Nicole Nguyen (University of Illinois Chicago) are collaborators on a project that investigates American news media coverage of the 'War on Terror' and victims of its policies across time. A major aspect of this research, sponsored by the Lender Center for Social Justice at Syracuse, is gathering community narratives often ignored by mainstream media. This research is also supported by Syracuse student fellows: Mohammad Ebad Athar, Olivia Boyer, Azadeh Ghanizadeh, Mary Hanrahan and Tia Poquette. Read more about the research here.
Mohammad Ebad Athar is a Ph.D. candidate in history and a graduate research associate in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs South Asia Center in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His dissertation examines the global impact of the post-9/11 period for the South Asian diaspora in the United States and the Persian Gulf. In drawing connections between those regions, he hopes to illustrate how South Asian identity has been securitized across transnational borders and how the community’s political activism has resisted that framework.
Azadeh Ghanizadeh is a Ph.D. candidate in writing studies, rhetoric and composition in A&S. Her dissertation focuses on media representations of refugees in the United States through film, public service announcements and United Nations celebrity endorsements. Her work challenges prevailing assumptions about multiculturalism and migration by examining how American media portray forced migration and how those portrayals affect public policy. Ghanizadeh holds degrees from the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. She has taught courses in critical thinking and composition, introductory and intermediate college writing and Middle East studies at Oregon State, Syracuse and Colgate Universities.
Dr. Maha Hilal is a Muslim Arab American and an expert on institutionalized Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and counternarrative work. She is the author of the book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11 and her writings have appeared in Vox, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Newsweek, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, and Truthout, among others. Dr. Hilal is also the founding Executive Director of Muslim Counterpublics Lab, an organization whose mission is to disrupt and subvert dehumanizing narratives that are designed and deployed to justify state violence against Muslims and an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University in Washington, DC. She earned her doctorate in May 2014 from the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University in Washington, D.C. She received her Master's Degree in Counseling and her Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This workshop is hosted by the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University and is supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Education - Title VI.
Register here: bit.ly/WarOnTerrorStories
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