Available From UC Press

Media do not reflect: media refract. In the United States, established and enduring prisms of prejudice about the projected “Middle East” are mediated through popular culture, broadcast news, government mission statements and official maps. This mediation serves to assert political boundaries and construct the United States as heroic against a villainous or victimized Middle East. These problematic maps and narratives are persistent over time and prevalent across genre, with clear consequences evidenced by the rise in discriminatory sentiments in the US population and experiences of harm in US Arab and Muslim communities. Exploring a wide range of media, Karin Gwinn Wilkins illuminates the shape and scope of these narratives and explores ways to counter these prisms of prejudice through informed and engaged strategic intervention in critical communication literacy. 

Karin Gwinn Wilkins is Dean of the School of Communication at the University of Miami, Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA), and serves on the Advisory Board with the Arab-US Association for Communication Education (AUSACE).

"Prisms of Prejudice not only highlights the roots of the increasing prejudice against Arabs and Muslims in the United States, but also offers practical and comprehensive solutions. It is well written, and it effectively identifies and explains mediated and visual narratives that contribute to antagonism."—Mohammed Al-Nawawy, author of Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement, and Citizen Journalism. 

"Karin Gwinn Wilkins admirably avoids but does not ignore traditional explanations of prejudice in popular culture, and emphasizes but does not over-determine the role of popular culture. Her work is also an especially welcome corrective to a literature often dominated by an uncritical praise of development initiatives towards the Middle East."—Joe F. Khalil, author of Arab Television Industries. 

“Confidently and accurately, Wilkins steers the reader through the frequent historico-political complexities of the region without drowning them in the hyper-specific. This book will help enormously in unpicking the sources of misperceptions, and in the process assist in the maturation of thinking citizens overall.”—John Downing, former Professor-in-Residence, Northwestern University in Qatar.