Pop Islam
eBook - PDF

Pop Islam

Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media

  1. 214 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Pop Islam

Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media

About this book

In the West, Islam and Muslim life have been imagined as existing in an opposing state to popular culture—a frozen faith unable to engage with the dynamic way popular culture shifts over time, its followers reduced to tropes of terrorism and enemies of the state.

Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media traces narratives found in contemporary American comic books, scripted and reality television, fashion magazines, comedy routines, and movies to understand how they reveal nuanced Muslim identities to American audiences, even as their accessibility obscures their diversity. Rosemary Pennington argues that even as American Muslims have become more visible in popular media and created space for themselves in everything from magazines to prime-time television to social media, this move toward "being seen" can reinforce fixed ideas of what it means to be Muslim.

Pennington reveals how portrayals of Muslims in American popular media fall into a "trap of visibility," where moving beyond negative tropes can cause creators and audiences to unintentionally amplify those same stereotypes. To truly understand where American narratives of who Muslims are come from, we must engage with popular media while also considering who is allowed to be seen there—and why.

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Yes, you can access Pop Islam by Rosemary Pennington in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Islamic Studies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction: America’s Imagined Muslims
  8. 1. Ms. Marvel and the ā€œEmbiggeningā€ of Muslims in America
  9. 2. The Scripted Lives of TV Muslims
  10. 3. Big Screen, Small Stage: Negotiating Identity through Comedy
  11. 4. Identity and Religion in Reality TV
  12. 5. A Glossy Islam: Muslim Lives in Fashion Magazines
  13. Conclusion: The Complications of Visibility
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index
  16. About the Author