Skip to content
1981
Volume 1, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2634-4726
  • E-ISSN: 2206-5857

Abstract

Arab-American women often find themselves represented in the mainstream media as oppressed victims in need of saving, but what sometimes gets less attention are the ways in which Arab-American women themselves are adding to the media landscape, through poetry, film and other forms. This article offers a textual analysis of artistic interventions circulated by Arab-American women in the media sphere, and supplements the analysis of the content and context of these interventions with individual interviews with the artists involved. It focuses on the poetry of Suheir Hammad and the cinematic interventions of Annemarie Jacir, which I situate as alternative media. I conceptualise alternative media as media content that challenges dominant assumptions and offers stylistic innovations for the purpose of inspiring social change. In addition, I argue that alternative media consist of transforming the existing stock of material into one’s own language in order to promote social justice. The article concludes with remarks regarding the opportunities and the limitations of alternative media in effecting social transformation.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/joacm_00017_1
2024-04-29
2025-02-11
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/joacm_00017_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test