At the heart of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies is a discipline that has been slowly expanding its borders around the issues of racism, sexism, ability, privilege, and oppression. As Latinx, African American, Asian Pacific American, Disability and LGBTQ Studies widen and shift the scope of Communication Studies, what often gets underplayed is the role of transnational Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Studies. It is imperative that the experiences of transnational individuals who live and move between the region and the U.S. are centered. For this reason, the goal of this book is to begin to bring Middle Eastern and North African Communication and Critical Cultural Studies in conversation with Global and Transnational Studies. We ask, how can scholars make a space for transnational MENA Studies within Communication and Cultural Studies? What are the pressing issues? Thus, at a time where Arabs, Arab Americans, Iranians, and Iranian Americans are under attack by Western media and governments, it is crucial to center their voices from a transnational perspective that privileges their positionalities and experiences rather than continue to study them from a reductive Eurocentric lens. We seek to build on existing scholarship by including essays that theorize from a Communication and Critical Cultural Studies lens. This book aims to bring together work by established and new or emerging scholars.
Haneen Ghabra (Ph.D., University of Denver) is Assistant Professor at Kuwait University’s Department of Mass Communication and author of the book, Muslim Women and White Femininity: Reenactment and Resistance (2018). She recently was the recipient for the Outstanding Article of the Year Award at the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Feminist Division (November 2018). Her work has been published in Communication Inquiry, Text and Performance Quarterly and Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies.
Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui (Ph.D., University of Denver) is Assistant Professor and coordinator of graduate studies in the Department of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. Her research engages critical rhetoric, political communication, new media, gender and sexuality studies, transnational feminism and social change in a variety of contexts, including social movements, political discourse and pop culture. More particularly, Dr. Alaoui’s scholarship considers how the often non-normative, un-institutionalized voices of resistance work to change their communities, and how normative or institutionalized discourses reinforce their ability to maintain power.
Shadee Abdi (Ph.D., University of Denver) is Assistant Professor of Communication at San Francisco State University. She is a critical cultural communication scholar whose research interests include intercultural, international, and diasporic communication, sexuality studies, family communication, performance studies, and performances of Iranian diaspora. Broadly, her work explores how conflicting discourses complicate and enhance our intersectional understandings of identity and power relative to race, culture, sexuality, gender, nationality, religion, ability, class, and family. She is specifically interested in narratives of resistance within familial and mediated contexts.
Bernadette Marie Calafell (Ph.D., University of North Carolina) is Professor and the inaugural Chair in the Department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Gonzaga University. She is author of Latina/o Communication Studies Theorizing Performance and Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture. She was the recipient of the Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance, the Córdova-Puchot Award for Scholar of the Year, the Lambda Award, and the Francine Merritt Award from the National Communication Association.
