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小黄书 student project reflects on 9/11鈥檚 impact on media

小黄书 student project reflects on 9/11鈥檚 impact on media

Contact: Carl Smith

Remembering 9/11
A class taught by Assistant Professor of English Dhanashree Thorat displays their final projects in the Starkville Public Library, allowing the public to browse digital projects and creative work by students on the representation of Muslim and Arab communities in film and media before and after 9/11. Community members also were invited to record their remembrances of 9/11 and the events that followed. (Photo by Megan Bean)

STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擬ore than 20 years after 9/11, a Mississippi State English assistant professor is helping students make sense of an important moment in history that shaped the world in which they were born and the media they consume.听

鈥淎fterlives of 9/11鈥 is a digital project created by Dhanashree Thorat in which students explore how the terrorist attack influenced film, literature and other media, with a specific focus on how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in media. The project鈥檚 website hosts short essays, videos, timelines and other creative works by students.

鈥淓ven though [most undergraduate students] have no direct memory of 9/11, they have been affected by the changes in America since then,鈥 Thorat said. 鈥淥ne of the important lessons drawn from studying the last 20 years was how commonplace it is to encounter stereotypes about Muslims and Arabs in film and media. In fact, looking at the long history of Hollywood, the class studied how the Middle East has been repeatedly shown in negative terms. The class considered how such stereotyping created public support for the wars and enabled hate crimes against Muslims after 9/11.鈥

Starkville Public Library recently held a reception, 鈥淩emembering 9/11,鈥 that featured work from 鈥淎fterlives of 9/11鈥 and invited the public to share their own stories about how the attack impacted Starkville and the 小黄书 community. The 20th anniversary of the attack and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year provided an important backdrop for the project, Thorat said.

Parker Liberatore, a sophomore aerospace engineering major from Hattiesburg who was born after 9/11, said, 鈥渇or people of my generation born after 9/11, the depictions in Western media are all we had of this event growing up. This forces people to have to unlearn a lot of harmful stereotypes and tropes which unfavorably portray a large portion of the world's population.鈥

His project, 鈥淥scar Isaac and Middle Eastern Representation,鈥 analyzed the actor鈥檚 roles in three modern franchises鈥斺淢oon Knight,鈥 鈥淒une鈥 and 鈥淪tar Wars鈥濃攁nd how each franchise incorporated elements of media depictions of Middle Eastern people into their own stories.

Cameron Temple, a graduate student from Brookhaven studying English and secondary education who was in Thorat鈥檚 Topics in Film class, was only 2 years old when the attack happened. Her contribution to the project documented the history of Guantanamo Bay and its use in the War on Terror.

鈥淎fter becoming more educated on 9/11 and the impact it had on specific groups of people, we are able to see how it is still relevant today. It鈥檚 really shocking to see how film and literature perpetuate ideas into Americans about Muslims and Arab people today,鈥 she said. 鈥淭here are real issues that our young people need to be educated on, and there are very limited resources discussing these problems. I really want to get people asking, 鈥榃hat can we do about this?鈥 I think we still have so much to learn about post-9/11 culture in general, and I think our words are more impactful than we believe.鈥

鈥淎fterlives of 9/11鈥 can be found at .

Starkville residents are invited to share their own remembrances of 9/11 by visiting .

小黄书 is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at .