Constructing ‘Arab Terrorism’—The Slow Emergence of Terrorism Discourse in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s

Authors

  • Annika Brunck University of Tübingen, English Department, Institute for American Studies

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.252

Keywords:

Terrorism, Middle East, United States, Terrorism Studies

Abstract

This article traces the beginnings of the discourse on “Arab terrorism“ in the U.S. after World War II. I argue that the discourse emerged slowly in the early 1970s, growing out of political concerns in the aftermath of the 1972 “Munich Massacre“ as well as previous work by scholars on political violence. Prominent cultural products like Leon Uris’ Exodus“ and Thomas Harris’ Black Sunday“ contributed to the vilification of Arab populations in the Middle East and merged with these political and academic discourses to construct Arab aggression in terms of terrorism.

Author Biography

Annika Brunck, University of Tübingen, English Department, Institute for American Studies

Annika Brunck is a Research Fellow at the Institute for American Studies at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. She holds a Master of Arts in British and North American Cultural Studies from the University of Freiburg and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish Philology from the Free University in Berlin. Currently, she works on her dissertation project which analyzes American discourses on terrorism and the Middle East from 1945 to the present day.  Her research interests include American literature and culture from the 20th century to the present, cultural theory, popular culture, conspiracy theories, and (critical) terrorism studies.

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Published

2016-05-18

How to Cite

Brunck, Annika. “Constructing ‘Arab Terrorism’—The Slow Emergence of Terrorism Discourse in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, May 2016, doi:10.5283/copas.252.

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2016)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.