Event
In line with Penn’s Covid19 response guidelines, the Cinema & Media Studies Program canceled the event below. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause and send our best wishes to all.
How to Constitute Empathy in the Age of Global Terror
Today there are vast movements of people from the Global South and East to the Global North and West due to economic, environmental, and political insecurity. Simultaneously in post 9/11 North America, the media and the political order have reanimated racist and sexist colonial tropes of the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia), as well as Cold War fears and warmongering. Across North America, Europe, and beyond, hegemonic institutions such as the security state apparatus, the corporate media (including cinematic systems), and right wing organization have reanimated supremacist nationalist movements of the past. Against this backdrop of polarization, in this presentation, I will address the question of how we can use the methods and teachings of critical media studies and ethnography to cultivate peace, cross-cultural understanding, empathy, and solidarity?
Wazhmah Osman is an Afghan- American academic and filmmaker. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University. Her area of interest are in the politics of representation and visual culture around issues and imagery pertaining to "The War On Terror" and "Afghan Women" and how they reverberate globally and locally in her native Afghanistan. With the support of two Social Science Research Council fellowships, she conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan and its surrounding countries from 2009-2010 and in the Spring of 2014. Through this ethnographic study and analysis of modern Afghan media, she explores debates over women’s rights, expressions of gender/sexuality, nationality/race/ethnicity/tribe, democracy, modernity, and religion. In her forthcoming book Brought to You by Foreigners, Warlords, and Activists: Television and the Afghan Culture Wars, under contract with Illinois Press’ Geopolitics of Information Series, she analyzes the impact of international funding and cross-border media flows on the national politics of Afghanistan, the region, and beyond. Her research and teaching are rooted in feminist media ethnographies that focus on the political economy of global media industries and the regimes of representation and visual culture they produce. Osman endeavors to intervene on these subjects beyond academia. She has appeared as a commentator on Democracy Now, WNYC, NPR, and Al Jazeera and works with community and activist groups. Prior to starting her graduate studies, she worked for more than a decade in television and film production for major American and international media institutions and as an independent journalist and filmmaker. Her critically acclaimed documentary films have screened in diverse venues, ranging from human rights organizations to national and international film festivals.