Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion with Evelyn Alsultany

A book talk with Evelyn Alsultany on her book - Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion

Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban,” provoked unprecedented opposition: Hollywood movies and mainstream television shows began to feature more Muslim characters in contexts other than terrorism; universities and private businesses included Muslims in their diversity initiatives; and the criminal justice system took hate crimes against Muslims more seriously. Yet Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion argues that, even amid this challenge to institutionalized Islamophobia, diversity initiatives failed on their promise, exposing the limits to Muslim inclusion. In this talk, Professor Alsultany will introduce the main themes of the book with a focus on how the term “Islamophobia” went mainstream in the US in the 2010s and facilitated the inclusion of Muslims in DEI initiatives. She will then consider the limits of the term “Islamophobia” in the context of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Bio

Evelyn Alsultany is a leading expert on the history of representations of Arabs and Muslims in the US media. She is the author of Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion (NYU Press, 2022), which was listed as one of the 10 best scholarly books of 2022 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 (NYU Press, 2012), listed by the LA Times as one of the best Hollywood books of all time. She is a professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She has published op-eds in The Hollywood Reporter, Time, and Newsweek.

Organized by Women's Center, Women's and Gender Studies, Islamic World Studies and cosponsored by International Studies, Religious Studies, and Center for Religion, Culture, and Community.

Host or Publisher DePaul Women's Center