The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism

In this cultural history of Americans' engagement with Islam in the colonial and antebellum period, Timothy Marr analyzes the historical roots of how the Muslim world figured in American prophecy, politics, reform, fiction, art and dress. Marr argues that perceptions of the Muslim world, long viewed not only as both an anti-Christian and despotic threat but also as an exotic other, held a larger place in domestic American concerns than previously thought. Historical, literary, and imagined encounters with Muslim history and practices provided a backdrop where different Americans oriented the direction of their national project, the morality of the social institutions, and the contours of their romantic imaginations. This history sits as an important background to help understand present conflicts between the Muslim world and the United States.

Author: Timothy Marr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 06/26/2006
Pages: 324
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 8.96h x 6.08w x 0.77d
ISBN: 9780521618076

About the Author
Marr, Timothy: - Timothy Marr is Assistant Professor in the Curriculum in American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he teaches seminars on such topics as cultural memory, captivity, tobacco, birth and death, and mating and marriage. He became interested in the subject of this book while teaching Herman Melville's Moby-Dick at Lahore American School in Pakistan in the late 1980s. He is the co-editor of Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick.