Melani McAlister

Bio: Melani McAlister is an academic researcher from George Washington University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Internationalism (politics) & Empire. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 21 publications receiving 577 citations. Previous affiliations of Melani McAlister include University of California Press.

Epic encounters : culture, media, and U.S. interests in the Middle East since 1945

Abstract: List of Illustrations Preface to the 2005 Edition Introduction: Middle East Interests 1. "Benevolent Supremacy": The Biblical Epic at the Dawn of the American Century, 1947-1960 2. The Middle East in African American Cultural Politics, 1955-1972 3. King Tut, Commodity Nationalism, and the Politics of Oil, 1973-1979 4. The Good Fight: Israel after Vietnam, 1972-1980 5. Iran, Islam, and the Terrorist Threat, 1979-1989 6. Military Multiculturalism in the Gulf War and After, 1990-1999 Conclusion: 9/11 and After: Snapshots on the Road to Empire Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Filmography Index

Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000

Abstract: List of Illustrations Preface Introduction: Middle East Interests 1. "Benevolent Supremacy": The Biblical Epic at the Dawn of the American Century, 1947-1960 2. The Middle East in African American Cultural Politics, 1955-1972 3. King Tut, Commodity Nationalism, and the Politics of Oil, 1973-1979 4. The Good Fight: Israel after Vietnam, 1972-1980 5. Iran, Islam, and the Terrorist Threat, 1979-1989 6. Military Multiculturalism in the Gulf War and After, 1990-1999 Conclusion: Orientalism Redux Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Filmography Index

What is Your Heart For?: Affect and Internationalism in the Evangelical Public Sphere

Abstract: In the summer of 2006, I interviewed a man in his early thirties, who told me that he had always wanted to be a missionary, although he instead now ran an organization that provided assistance to single mothers in North Carolina. That was OK, he said: “I have a heart for widows and orphans.” A few years earlier, Christianity Today had interviewed Franklin Graham, who called for American churches to begin searching for people in their congregations who “had a heart for HIV/AIDs,” so that they could begin to support prevention and treatment in Africa. Almost everywhere one looks in US evangelical culture today, people explain their commitments in this very specific language: “I have a heart for x or y.” Since at least the mid-1990s, “having a heart” has been used to evoke a passion that goes beyond mere predilection: it suggests an unplanned moment of contact with an issue that leads the believer to an understanding of the particular walk God has in mind for her. Having a “heart for” something is simultaneously God-given and unusual in its intensity. It often, although not necessarily, involves crossing national borders. This essay explores how evangelical hearts have enabled evangelical political commitments, especially internationally; that is, I am interested in the intersection between evangelical global visions and the politics of affect. There is, of course, a long and checkered history of Christian internationalism of the missionary sort. But perhaps the key difference in the current moment is that US evangelical internationalism increasingly constitutes Christians outside the US as part of “us.”

A Cultural History of the War without End

Abstract: In October 2001, when President George W. Bush outlined his administration's responses to the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, he also announced that the United States was about to begin a "new and different war," a war against terrorism that would need to be fought "on all fronts." Bush argued that unlike World War II, which brought clear-cut victory, or the Vietnam War, which ended in quagmire, or even the high-tech Gulf War, the new war would be "a different kind of war that requires a different type of approach and a different type of mentality." Speaking to a reporter a few days later, Vice President Richard Cheney put it more bluntly, "It is different than the Gulf War was, in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime."' The sense of a historic rupture with previous models of understanding the world was widespread in the weeks following the attacks. Not only were the levels of destruction and the extraordinary human casualties unheard-of for Americans in peacetime, but the live television coverage had left the nation stunned. Eventually, perhaps, television's endless repetition of the second plane slicing through the south tower of the World Trade Center would become numbing, but other, more personal, images retained a profound emotional resonance: firefighters covered in soot, rushing to save those they could and, later, searching through the rubble. Then came the friends and family who began to arrive on the scene-and on the screen-in the hours after the attacks. They carried large photocopied photos of their loved ones and spoke to reporters, tearfully telling of their last contact or determinedly showing the pictures that they hoped would inspire rescuers. Within days, September 11 had taken on the folkloric status of the assassination of John F. Kennedy; at nearly every gathering, people would tell their stories: where they were and what they were doing when they heard-or, rather, saw-the news. It was not surprising, then, that the Bush administration would stress what many people in the United States already felt, that the nation was facing an unprecedented crisis and that nothing in our past had prepared us for such an attack. One corollary

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

Abstract: Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

Abstract: MC 281 is the second in the required sophomore sequence for Social Relations and Policy. In this course, we will explore the interactions and experiences between and among various groups in American history. We will consider how Americans both defended and contested prevailing definitions of fitness for citizenship and inclusion in the political process and American life, and how groups sought to gain access to social and political equality. This course focuses on the history of relationships within and between different groups in the United States, and explores the complexities of those relations. Rarely centered solely on race or ethnicity, such interactions were also affected by gender, sexuality, religion, nation, and class. We will also explore the shifting definitions of race and ethnicity. Students will analyze not only the experiences of the different groups, but also the connections between them to assess the larger dynamics and their implications for public policy.

The paradox of group-based guilt: modes of national identification, conflict vehemence, and reactions to the in-group's moral violations.

Abstract: The authors examined the relationships between 2 modes of national identification (attachment to the in-group and the in-group's glorification) and reactions to the in-group's moral violations among Israeli students. Data were collected during a period of relative calm in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as during a period of great intensification of this conflict. As expected, in Study 1, the 2 modes of identification had contrasting relationships with group-based guilt: Attachment was positively related whereas glorification was negatively related to group-based guilt for in-group's past infractions. Glorification suppressed the attachment effect but not vice versa. Both relationships were mediated by the use of exonerating cognitions. In Study 2, group-based guilt for the in-group's current wrongdoings was increased by priming critical rather than conventional attachment to the in-group, suggesting a causal effect of mode of identification on the experience of negative group-based emotions.