Call For Papers: MENA Migrants and Diasporas in Twenty-First-Century Media

Guest Editor: Waleed F. Mahdi

The first two decades of the twenty-first century put the 1990s accounts of globalization, multiculturalism, clash of civilizations, and transnational mobility of peoples and ideas through the rigorous tests of the 9/11 attacks and the global war on terror, the information revolution, the Arab uprisings, the “migration crisis,” and the COVID-19 pandemic. The result has been an array of experiences shaped by an evolving global stress on the securitization of borders, the increasing appeal of populism, and a rising sense of global Islamophobia and xenophobia. These have occurred amidst waves of disruption to identity and community life, forced and voluntary displacement, and the imposition of growing challenges to mobility in a globalized and yet heavily policed world. In this context of change and struggle, how are voluntary and involuntary migrants and diasporas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) been represented in twenty-first-century media? How do representational modes of identity, mobility, and belonging engage these pressing realities? What do these representations reveal about agency and resistance against institutionalized forms of exclusion and violence? And how do migrant and diasporic medias and representations themselves constitute counter-archives and counter-narratives?

This special issue seeks scholarly contributions that engage such questions through analyses of representations in local, national, or transnational contexts, both in the Global North and South. We welcome topics including but not limited to examinations of otherness, statelessness, self-representation, cultural citizenship, diasporic activism, and aesthetics of representation. Submissions may include critical examinations of discourses of nation, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability among others. For the purposes of this issue, media is broadly defined to include print media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, novels, comics); broadcast media (e.g., radio, television, film), transit media (e.g., billboards, banners, posters); and digital media (e.g., blogs, websites, social media). MENA is also broadly defined to include peoples who originate from, claim lineage to, or identify with the Middle East, the Sahel and West Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We welcome qualitative or quantitative analyses of media, and are open to multi-method manuscripts that further utilize narrative interviews, participant observations, archival and oral history, and/or emerging methods in digital humanities.

Articles between 7-10,000 words inclusive of endnotes, should be sent in MS Word format to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu by March 15, 2021. Please direct any inquiries about the special issue to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

Full submission guidelines can be found on our website: https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/about/submissions