ByGeorge!

October 2008

Faculty Focus: Melani McAlister


Melani McAlister, associate professor of American studies and international affairs, has traveled as far away as Egypt and Sudan to research how American evangelicals engage in global issues.

By Julia Parmley

As a teenager, Melani McAlister could not locate Lebanon on a map. Today the associate professor of American studies and international affairs is an expert on United States-Middle East relations and has lectured all over the world on U.S. cultural history, religion, and perceptions of the Middle East.

“When I learned about the 1979 Iran-U.S. hostage crisis in high school, I thought it was a mysterious set of events,” says Dr. McAlister. “I had limited interest in the Middle East until I was asked to fact-check an article on the 1982 Lebanon War during a Newsweek magazine internship.”

After she graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1984 with a degree in international studies, Dr. McAlister spent a year in Egypt as a Fulbright Scholar, where she explored the country’s views on women and democracy. Dr. McAlister then worked for five years with the peace movement group Mobilization for Survival in Boston, focusing on U.S. policies toward the Middle East, before pursuing a doctorate in American civilization at Brown University. Her first book, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, was a study of how U.S. media and popular culture have represented the region and its history to Americans.

In 1996, Dr. McAlister began teaching cultural history and media studies in GW’s Department of American Studies. She has also taught dean’s seminars on U.S.-Middle East cultural encounters, classes she particularly likes because of their smaller size and quality of discussion.

“I enjoy watching students as they begin to realize they are thinking in different and more critical ways,” she explains. “They become self-conscious about their own learning and about how to make arguments, research, and think critically. It’s fun to see and to consider how they will apply the content they learn to their own lives.”

While writing and teaching about culture and the role of the United States in the world, Dr. McAlister became increasingly interested in religion and politics. She was raised as a Southern Baptist, and, while no longer an evangelical Christian herself, Dr. McAlister says she has developed a scholarly interest in how American evangelicals engage global issues.

“Often religion plays an important role in how we view the world,” she says. “It can become so much a part of us that we don’t even see its effects or quite realize the complex ways it can be intertwined in all aspects of our lives.”

For her upcoming book, Our God in the World: The Global Visions of American Evangelicals, Dr. McAlister traveled to southern Sudan in 2006 with a small team of evangelicals from a megachurch in Wisconsin. She watched them visit schools and speak with local Sudanese and stayed with them in thatched cottages called tukuls, sleeping on gazelle skins. She also has followed young evangelicals working in Egypt and has researched evangelical tourism in Israel.

“It is remarkable how evangelicals are increasingly engaging others in countries around the world,” she says. “Being able to analyze them has been an exciting and unexpected part of my studies.”

Dr. McAlister has consulted with American studies programs in Egypt, Israel, Palestine, and Syria. She is also a member of the International Advisory Board for the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut. Dr. McAlister has received faculty fellowships at both Princeton and Harvard universities and has published numerous articles on topics ranging from Christian music to African American cultural politics.

Dr. McAlister says GW’s Department of American Studies has expanded its faculty and research to address the increasing global connections between countries and cultures. Faculty members are examining U.S. national identity in a wide variety of global contexts, from Chinese-American relations after World War II to the presence of Latino communities in the United States.

“It is important to expand the field to respond to changes around the world,” she says.

When she’s not on campus, Dr. McAlister unwinds with an hour of yoga every day in her Bethesda, Md., home, and enjoys watching the television shows Battlestar Galactica and The Wire and reading science fiction. But she makes sure to enjoy the many resources Washington, D.C., has to offer.

“I really enjoy the city life,” she says. “GW’s urban location is perfect for students and perfect for us to use in our teaching.”



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