Mipsterz

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M. Peterson ◽  
Nabil Echchaibi
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
Gendered Identity ◽  
Viral Video ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Multiple Frames

In a two-and-a-half-minute-long video released on YouTube in November 2013, a series of short clips featured a group of self-confident young Muslim women hanging out in various urban landscapes in the United States, as Jay-Z's song “Somewhere in America” played in the background. The viral video, entitled “Somewhere in America #MIPSTERZ,” quickly became controversial, amid heated accusations that a “misguided” group of hipster Muslim women had gone “too far” in reappropriating modesty and staking out an edgy religious and gendered identity. This chapter focuses on how the women behind the Mipsterz video engaged with visuals, urban styles, fashion, fun, and other forms of popular culture to liberate themselves from a relentless framing that portrays them as either covered and oppressed by Islam or uncovered and sexually liberated by Western secular culture. It argues that popular culture and religion intersect in productive ways, breaking free of the discourse of victimization and exoticism and helping us understand the complex, multiple frames of reference that define American Muslims' everyday lives.

Teresa Mannion and the Emergence of Extreme Weather Culture in Ireland

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Diane Negra
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Extreme Weather ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Viral Video ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
Strong Winds ◽  
Risk Coverage

In this article I consider how registers of weather media carry/convey cultural information, specifically how texts about extreme weather articulate with investment in a supposed post-recession restored normality marked by the Irish government's commitment to deregulated transnational capitalism. I maintain that, in a process of cross-cultural remediation, sensationalist codes of US weather media that discursively manage awareness of systemic climate problems are just starting to infiltrate the Irish broadcasting environment. In early December 2015 RTÉ’s Teresa Mannion covered a strong gale, Storm Desmond, amidst inclement conditions in Salthill, Co Galway. Modelling the kind of ‘body at risk’ coverage consummately performed by US Weather Channel personnel, Mannion could barely speak over the lashing rain and strong winds in a dramatic broadcast that quickly became a viral video. This article analyses the fascination with Mannion's piece and its memetic, and attends to the nature of the pleasure taken in her on-camera discomfiture and the breach of gendered territory committed by Mannion at a time when national popular culture in Ireland is under increased obligation to identify and explain climate change-related extreme weather.

Applying the Devil's Works in a Holy Cause: Working-Class Popular Culture and the Salvation Army in the United States, 1879-1900

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Lillian Taiz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Salvation Army ◽  
Public Meeting ◽  
The Many ◽  
Sunday Evening

Forty-eight hours after they landed in New York City in 1880, a small contingent of the Salvation Army held their first public meeting at the infamous Harry Hill's Variety Theater. The enterprising Hill, alerted to the group's arrival from Britain by newspaper reports, contacted their leader, Commissioner George Scott Railton, and offered to pay the group to “do a turn” for “an hour or two on … Sunday evening.” In nineteenth-century New York City, Harry Hill's was one of the best known concert saloons, and reformers considered him “among the disreputable classes” of that city. His saloon, they said, was “nothing more than one of the many gates to hell.”

Muslims, Islamic Law, and the Sociopolitical Reality in the United States

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Sherman A. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Subjective Responses ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The One ◽  
Politics And Law

Native born African-American Muslims and the Immigrant Muslimcommunity foxms two important groups within the American Muslimcommunity. Whereas the sociopolitical reality is objectively the samefor both groups, their subjective responses are quite different. Both arevulnerable to a “double Consciousness,” i.e., an independently subjectiveconsciousness, as well as seeing oneself through the eyes of theother, thus reducing one’s self-image to an object of other’s contempt.Between the confines of culture, politics, and law on the one hand andthe “Islam as a way of life” on the other, Muslims must express theircultural genius and consciously discover linkages within the diverseMuslim community to avoid the threat of double consciousness.

Black Muslimness Mobilized

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef J. Carter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Religious Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
West African ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Sufi Order

The Mustafawi Tariqa is a transnational Sufi Order that was initiated in 1966 by the late Cheikh Mustafa Gueye Haydara (d. 1989) in Thiès, Senegal. Yet, only since 1994 has this specific Sufi network reached westward across the water, bringing American Muslims—many of whom are converts—into the larger network. In the United States, the majority of students who have entered the Tariqa and have declared allegiance (bayah) to Shaykh Arona Rashid Faye Al-Faqir are African-Americans who have inserted themselves religiously, culturally, and pedagogically into a West African Sufi tradition which emphasizes religious study and the practice of dhikr (remembrance of God). Shaykh Arona Faye is a Senegalese religious leader who relocated to the southeastern region of the United States from West Africa to spread the religion of Islam and expose American Muslims to the rich West African tradition of spiritual purification and Islamic piety. At the same time, many of those who are African-American members of this tradition have made it a point to travel to Senegal themselves to strengthen transatlantic ties with West African compatriots and visit sacred burial sites in the small city of Thiès. I examine how two sites of pilgrimage for the Mustafawi—Moncks Corner, South Carolina and Thiès, Senegal—play a part in the infrastructure of Black Atlantic Sufi network. Moncks Corner is the central site in which access to the Tariqa’s most charismatic living shaykh, Shaykh Arona Faye, has worked for the past two decades teaching and mentoring those on the Path. On the other hand, Thiès is the location where the Tariqa’s founder is buried and travelers visit the town in order to pay homage to his memory. I show how these sites catalyze mobility and operate as spaces of spiritual refuge for visitors in both local and regional contexts by looking at how a local zawiyah produces movement in relation to a broader tariqa. By looking at pilgrimage and knowledge transmission, I argue that the manner in which esoteric approaches to spiritual care and the embodiment of higher Islamic ethics via the West African Sufi methodology of the Mustafawi informs the manner in which Muslims of varying African descent inhabit a broader diasporic identification of “Black Muslimness.”

Capturing the Art of Public Service: The Government’s Perspective

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Tony Carrizales
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Government Institutions ◽  
Art Forms

Public Service, in popular culture, can be viewed through many artistic lenses. Although there has been a consistent negative portrayal of government through art forms such as film and television, this research looks to review how government institutions in the United States have used art to provide a positive portrayal of public service. Eight forms of public service art are outlined through a content analysis of the holdings at the Virtual Museum of Public Service. The findings show that government and public entities have historically and continually engaged in promoting public service through art. Many of these public art examples are accessible year round, without limitations, such as buildings, statues, and public structures.

Researching American Muslims: A Case Study of Surveillance and Racialized State Control

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hajer Al-Faham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Control ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
American Muslims ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Selection Of

How does surveillance shape political science research in the United States? In comparative and international politics, there is a rich literature concerning the conduct of research amid conditions of conflict and state repression. As this literature locates “the field” in distant contexts “over there,” the United States continues to be saturated with various forms of state control. What this portends for American politics research has thus far been examined by a limited selection of scholars. Expanding on their insights, I situate “the field” in the United States and examine surveillance of American Muslims, an understudied case of racialized state control. Drawing on qualitative data from a case study of sixty-nine interviews with Arab and Black American Muslims, I argue that surveillance operated as a two-stage political mechanism that mapped onto research methodologically and substantively. In the first stage, surveillance reconfigured the researcher-researchee dynamic, hindered recruitment and access, and limited data-collection. In the second stage, surveillance colored the self-perceptions, political attitudes, and civic engagement of respondents, thereby indicating a political socialization unfolding among Muslims. The implications of this study suggest that researchers can mitigate against some, but not all, of the challenges presented by surveillance and concomitant forms of state control.

Why Is There So Much Christianity in the United States? A Reply to Sommerville

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 858-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Church History ◽  
Voluntary Organizations ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
The North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

If we are going to explain the slow pace of de-Christianization for the United States relative to other industrialized societies in the North Atlantic West, we might well begin with the church-state relationship. The absence of an established church in the United States has enabled religious affiliation to function, like other voluntary organizations in “civil society,” as mediators between the individual and the nation. I conimented on this rather old idea in a book C. John Sommerville is kind enough to cite in another connection, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture, but since he does not take up this point, I will develop it a bit further here, before reacting to Sommerville's other concerns as expressed in his refreshingly fair-minded rejoinder to my essay in the March 2001 issue of Church History.

The Business of Rhyming: Burma-Shave Poetry and Popular Culture

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Mike Chasar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Advertising Campaign ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
The Core ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Creative Forces

This essay uses the example of the long‐lived and popular Burma‐Shave advertising campaign to argue that literary critics should extend their attention to the vast amounts of poetry written for advertising purposes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Burma‐Shave campaign—which featured sequences of rhyming billboards erected along highways in the United States from 1926 to 1963—not only cultivated characteristics of literary and even avantgarde writing but effectively pressured that literariness into serving the commercial marketplace. At the same time, as the campaign's reception history shows, the spirit of linguistic play and innovation at the core of Burma‐Shave's poetry unintentionally distracted consumers' attention away from the commercial message and toward the creative forces of reading and writing poetry. A striking example of popular reading practices at work, this history shows how poetry created even in the most commercial contexts might resist the commodification that many twentieth‐century poets and critics feared. (MC)

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