Iconic war images and the myth of the ‘good American Soldier’

This article explores the ‘good American soldier’ as a gendered ideal type shaped by, and reproductive of, myths about American military success, romantic notions of small-town working and white America, notions of heterosexual virility, and ableist stereotypes about personal resilience. Drawing from an analysis of 10 years of media coverage of an iconic image dubbed the ‘Marlboro Marine’, the article outlines three specific myths linked to the ‘good American soldier’, in order to provide an insight into ideals of militarized masculinity and the gendered myths that shape American nationalism and identity. In developing this analysis, the article extends existing work on military masculinities by introducing the ‘good American soldier’ ideal type and explores the multiple myths associated with this ideal type. The article also demonstrates how a media narrative analysis that covers an extended period of time makes it possible to observe shifting narratives associated with the ‘good American soldier’.

How We Remember 1947

In my Major Research Project, I explore how the India-Pakistan partition of 1947 is conceptualized in a popular media text. Specifically, I look at a TV series produced in Pakistan that explores the partition and the events immediately preceding it, that led to the splitting of India into India and Pakistan from a nationalistic perspective. Major themes that are noteworthy of analysis include gender relations, notions of belonging and community, nationalism and identity, contextualization and impact of media, and trauma. Moreover, I pay attention to how gender relations and notions of family are conceptualized in relation to nationalistic ideologies, and how both are impacted during traumatic events. In particular, my research interest includes studying how this media depiction of the partition plays into or contests dominant narratives of the nation and citizenship along the lines of religious and gender classifications. The literature review below aims to explore theoretical conceptualizations of my areas of interest in order to enable my media text analysis to be situated in relation to existing literature.

How We Remember 1947

In my Major Research Project, I explore how the India-Pakistan partition of 1947 is conceptualized in a popular media text. Specifically, I look at a TV series produced in Pakistan that explores the partition and the events immediately preceding it, that led to the splitting of India into India and Pakistan from a nationalistic perspective. Major themes that are noteworthy of analysis include gender relations, notions of belonging and community, nationalism and identity, contextualization and impact of media, and trauma. Moreover, I pay attention to how gender relations and notions of family are conceptualized in relation to nationalistic ideologies, and how both are impacted during traumatic events. In particular, my research interest includes studying how this media depiction of the partition plays into or contests dominant narratives of the nation and citizenship along the lines of religious and gender classifications. The literature review below aims to explore theoretical conceptualizations of my areas of interest in order to enable my media text analysis to be situated in relation to existing literature.

Gratitude Needs a Giver: Why Political Science Needs Intelligent Design

This article presents Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy. Classical liberalism is under renewed attack from many directions. Many of its most notable defenders claim that the liberal order has no need of distinctively Christian theological resources. This essay scrutinizes that claim and argues for the necessity of a Christian doctrine of providence. KEYWORDS: God, gratitude, Jonah Goldberg, J. Gresham Machen, political science, Western civilization, providence, historicism, John Calvin

Foodways and Foodwashing: Israeli Cookbooks and the Politics of Culinary Zionism

The paper explores the political narratives produced in English-language Israeli cookbooks. We examine an understudied, yet central component of everyday international relations, everyday nationalism, and identity contestations as practiced through gastronomy, and highlight the dilemma between the different political uses of popular culture in the context of conflict resolution and resistance. Our argument identifies different narratives represented in what we term Culinary Zionism. One narrative is explicitly political, discusses Israeli cuisine as a foodway, and contributes to creating a space of, and a path for, coexistence and recognition of the Other. A second narrative is found in tourist-orientated cookbooks that offer a supposedly apolitical story of culinary tours in Israel. We problematize the political and normative implications of these narratives by exploring the potential role of these books to open space for dialogue and to increase the familiarity and interest of foreign audiences of Israel and the conflict. We contrast this possibility with their potential to what we term foodwashing, namely the process of using food to symbolically wash over violence and injustices (the violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in this case).

Remaking Muslim Lives

Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina examines what it means to live a Muslim life amid the political ruptures, economic deprivation, and transformation of religious institutions in postsocialist, postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Popular representations of Muslim communities in Southeastern Europe have long featured simplistic images of Muslims’ lost faith, and of Islam as serving the interests of nationalism and identity politics. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research, this book challenges these stereotypes. Through an exploration of the everyday experiences of several generations of Muslim men and women and against the backdrop of the turbulent postsocialist and postwar transformations, David Henig shows how living a Muslim life in rural Bosnia and Herzegovina is ordered and inscribed by deep relations of obligation and care with the living, the dead, and the divine that spans generations. His evocative study traces the manifestations of these relations from the intimate spheres of houses and village neighborhoods to the waiting room of an Islamic dream healer, from village mosques and outdoor prayers for rain to the “little Hajj” pilgrimage and commemorative sites for the Ottoman martyrs and those of the recent Bosnian war. This study makes a powerful contribution to our understanding of how religion and historical consciousness, interlocked through the rubric of exchange, is actively engaged to make sense of past tumultuous experiences and future-oriented expectations in the present.