MENA Director Brian Edwards in the News
April 1, 2017
Brian Edwards, Crown Professor in Middle East Studies, Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, and Director of the MENA Program, has been in the media of late — giving radio interviews, recording podcasts, writing articles, and being profiled:
- The Organist, a monthly podcast from The Believer magazine and KCRW radio in Los Angeles, prominently featured Brian in their recent "Baptism of solitude: Paul Bowles's Morocco tapes" episode. Brian also wrote an introduction to the podcast, "Lose yourself in Paul Bowles’s 1959 Morocco tapes."
- Worldview, Chicago Public Radio's international affairs program, interviewed Brian, along with the curator Abdellah Karroum, director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, for a segment on "The Artist's Role In The Arab Spring," which previewed the event Generation 00: Cultural Practices before the Middle East Uprisings, which MENA co-sponsored with the Block Museum of Art.
- The New Books in Islamic Studies podcast (part of the New Books Network) interviewed Brian about his book After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East.
- Brian served on the Commission on Language Learning, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences body that produced the new report America’s Languages: Investing in Language Learning for the 21st Century. The report was discussed in the Inside Higher Ed article "Language Study as a National Imperative" and led to the Northwestern Now story "Northwestern expert calls for more language learning in U.S. — Professor Brian Edwards is working to improve language learning at all educational levels" and the Daily Northwestern article "Northwestern professor seeks to bring Arabic language instruction to public schools."
- Brian published the essay "Moving Target: Is Homeland Still Racist?" in the Los Angeles Review of Books, a political reading of the new season of the popular but controversial TV series