Representations of Islam in United States Comics, 1880-1922

Maryanne A. Rhett is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and World History at Monmouth University, USA. She is the author of A Global History of the Balfour Declaration (2015).

• Introduction and Definitions1. “What Muslims?” 2. “Our Muhammedan Wards, the Philippine Problem”3. “The Harem and the Bath”4. “The Bloody Turk”5. “Holy War and the Yellow Peril”6. “Timeless, Child-Like, and Drugged Up”7. “Echoes of the Past”NotesBibliographyIndex

Maryanne Rhett provides evidence for the claim that comics matter – that they tell us something about society and the collective meanings we have made of the world around us, both as far back as the late 19th and early 20th century platinum age of comics and – by implication -- today. She uncovers political cartoons and comics strips that are otherwise buried, fluently reads them as art and text, and inserts them into a discourse informed by Edward Said and Yvonne Haddad. Critically, this work extends our understanding of Islam in the United States, and American visions of Islam, to an era often ignored by other scholars.