Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media

Rutgers Depth of Field Series

by Ella Shohat (Contributor)

Reflecting the burgeoning academic interest in issues of nation, race, gender, sexuality, and other axes of identity, Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media brings all of these concerns under the same umbrella, contending that these issues must be discussed in relation to each other. Communities, societies, nations, and even entire continents, the book suggests, exist not autonomously but rather in a densely woven web of connectedness.

To explore this complexity, the editors have forged links between usually compartmentalized fields (especially media studies, literary theory, visual culture, and critical anthropology) and areas of inquiry-particularly postcolonial and diasporic studies and a diverse set of ethnic and area studies. This book, which links all these issues in suggestive ways, provides an indispensable guide for students and scholars in a wide variety of disciplines. Essays in this groundbreaking volume include Julianne Burton-Carvajal on ethnic identity in Lone Star ; Manthia Diawara on diasporic documentary; Hamid Naficy on independent transnational film genres; Robyn Wiegman on whiteness studies; Faye Ginsburg on indigenous media; and Jennifer Gonzßles on race in cyberspace; Ana M. Lopez on modernity and Latin American cinema; and Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan on Warrior Marks and multiculturalism and globalization.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

350 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Ella Habiba Shohat (Arabic: إيلا حبيبة شوحط; born 1959) is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University, and has taught, lectured and written extensively on issues having to do with Eurocentrism and Orientalism, as well as with postcolonial and transnational approaches to Cultural Studies. More specifically, since the 1980s she has developed critical approaches to the study of Arab Jews/Mizrahim in the context of Israel and Palestine. Born to a Baghdadi family, Ella Habiba Shohat defines herself as an Arab Jew.

Her writing has been translated into several languages, including: Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, and Italian. Shohat has also served on the editorial board of several journals, including: Social Text; Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies; Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; and Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. She is a recipient of such fellowships as Rockefeller and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, where she also taught at the School of Criticism and Theory. Recently she was awarded a Fulbright research / lectureship at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, for working on the cultural intersections between the Middle East and Latin America.

(from Wikipedia)