Farzaneh Hall, Room 326
Phone: 405-325-3726
Email: wfm@ou.edu
Homepage
Education
PhD in American Studies, University of Minnesota, 2015
MA in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of New Mexico, 2008
BA in English Literature, Taiz University (Yemen), 2003
Bio
Waleed F. Mahdi is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he co-directs the Center for Middle East Studies. He is a scholar of US-Arab cultural politics, with expertise in cultural representation and identity politics. His peer-reviewed work appears in top-tier journals, including American Quarterly, Journal of American Ethnic History, and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.
Waleed’s current book project, “Seeing Yemen: Imperial Security and Yemeni Visual Narratives of Resistance,” offers a multi-faceted analysis of competing visual modes in seeing Yemen from a US-securitized lens characterized by violence and imperial amnesia to a Yemeni lens marked by witnessing, grieving, and defying erasure. He is also currently co-editing a book project, “Arab American Studies: A Field in Motion,” which captures critical directions in the field of Arab American Studies that provide theoretical, historical, and geographic framings that decenter whiteness and emphasize peripheral communities and experiences.
Waleed’s first book, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (Syracuse University Press, 2020), examines how Arab American belonging is constructed, defined, and redefined across Hollywood, Egyptian, and Arab American cinemas.
Teaching
IAS 5603 Mobility in a Global Context
IAS 5940 US-Arab Relations
IAS 5493 Global Islamophobia
IAS 3783 US-Arab Cultural Encounters
IAS 3123 Arab Visual Cultures
MLLL 3413 Arabic Literature and Culture
MLLL 3443 Islamic Culture in the United States
Scholarly Publications
Book
Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation, Syracuse University Press (2020)
Edited Special issues
MENA Migrants and Diasporas in Twenty-First-Century Media, edited by Waleed F. Mahdi for Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies, vol 9, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1-193.
The Aesthetics of Dissent: Culture and Politics of Transformation in the Arab World, co-edited by Eid Mohamed, Waleed F. Mahdi, and Hamid Dabashi for the International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 23, issue 2, March 2020, pp. 141-281.
Peer-reviewed articles and chapters
“Filmmaking Shadows: The Pitfall of Morocco as Hollywood of Africa,” in Routledge Handbook on Arab Cinema, editor Noha Mellor. Routledge, June 2024, pp. 312-323
“Contemporary Modes of Yemeni American Agency Between Urgency and Emergence” in Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 43, no. 1, 2023, 43-66.
“Sovereignty for Security: The Paradox of Urgency and Intervention in Yemen,” in The Struggle to Reshape the Middle East in the 21st Century, editor Samer S. Shehata. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023, pp. 174-192.
“Echoes of a Scream: US Drones and Articulations of the Houthi Sarkha Slogan in Yemen,” in Cultural Production and Social Movements After the Arab Spring: Nationalism, Politics and Transnational Identity, editors Eid Mohamed and Ayman El Desouky. London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 205-221, 2021.
"Transmilitainment: Morocco’s Role in Hollywood’s War on Terror Films" in American Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 4, 2021, 767-791.
“Representation without Recognition: A Survey of Arab American Images in Egyptian Cinema” in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (Cinema Journal formerly), vol. 59, no. 1, 2019, 89-111.
“Post-Oriental Otherness: Hollywood’s Moral Geography of Arab Americans,” in Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of Middle East Migration Studies, 3, no. 2, 35-61, 2016.
“Youth and Revolution: A Call to Reform Higher Education in Yemen,” (co-edited chapter with Abulghani Al-Hattami) in Education and the Arab Spring: Resistance, Reform, and Democracy, editors Eid Mohamed, Hannah Gerber, and Slimane Aboulkacem. Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 83-94, 2016.
“Liberal or Imperial: U.S. Discursive Formations of the Muslim Image,” in Transformation of the Muslim World in the 21st Century, editor Muhammed Huseyin Mercan, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 49-62, 2016.
“Marked off: Hollywood’s Untold Story of Arabs/Muslims and Camels,” in Muslims and American Popular Culture, editors Anne R. Richards and Iraj Omidvar. Praeger, 196-223, 2014.
