Waleed F. Mahdi

Associate Professor, Director of Center for Middle East Studies, US-Arab Cultural Politics

wfm@ou.edu
Farzaneh Hall 326
(405) 325-3726

Waleed F. Mahdi is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he directs the Center for Middle East Studies. He is a scholar of US-Arab cultural politics, with expertise in visual culture, diaspora politics, and identity representation. 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: US Security and Yemeni Visual Memory," offers a multi-faceted analysis of competing visual modes in seeing Yemen from a US-securitized lens characterized by violence and amnesia to a Yemeni lens marked by witnessing, grieving, and defying erasure. He is also currently co-editing a book project, "Arab American Studies Unbound: Histories, Communities, and Disciplines," which provides new theoretical, historical, and geographic framings in the field of Arab American Studies.

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.

Selected Publicaitons

Book

Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation, Syracuse University Press (2020)

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, December 2021 (forthcoming).
"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, pp. 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.

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