UNIV101 Presents: Haqq and Hollywood: 100 Years of Muslim Tropes and How to Transform Them

From Rudolph Valentino's "big break" in the 1921 silent film hit The Sheik to the long-awaited Dune remake released in 2021, Arab, Islamicate, and Muslim characters and narratives have been woven into Hollywood storytelling for over a century. In this talk, Dr. Maytha Alhassen, writer, journalist, professor, and pop culture senior fellow, offers a qualitative timeline of the triangulation between this pop culture image-making with politics and public opinion. Beginning with early anti-Black and Orientalized depictions of Muslims by Europeans in the age of modernity, alhassen uses this theoretical foundation to explore the ways Muslims are racialized, gendered, and classed on TV and film from a pre-9/11 era, in the 9/11 aftermath, and finally in response to a 11/9 "Reckoning."

This event is the fourth and final in the "UNIV101 Presents" speaker series, and is open to students, faculty, staff, and non-Duke affiliated community members.

Please register for the webinar here: bit.ly/HaqqHollywood (Case Sensitive)

Co-sponsored by Duke Office of Undergraduate Education, Duke Islamic Studies Center, Duke Center for Muslim Life, Duke Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Asian American and Diaspora Studies at Duke, and Duke Arts.

For more information, please contact Theo Cai (theodore.y.cai@duke.edu)