American Encounters With Islam in the Atlantic World

This timely monograph on the relationship between America and the Muslim world explores the development of persistent narratives of opposition from the colonial period to the present. Focusing on interactions in the Atlantic sphere rather than western incursions into the Middle East, Waller (American cultural studies, U. of Wurzburg)examines the political events, and their attendant cultural impacts, of captivity narrative within the larger scope of American-Muslim relations. She discusses the enslavement of Captain John Smith in the Ottoman empire in the early seventeenth century, early American confrontations with the Barbary pirates, and late twentieth century captivity narratives such as the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and the Iraq war capture of Jessica Lynch. The text examines the cumulative effects of perceptions of vulnerability, and the long history of western definition of Muslim actors as the Other. The price is converted from euros. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)