| Northwestern | Georgetown | ||
| MIT-220 Analyzing Media Texts | Fall 2020 | Comparative Political Systems | Spring 2022 |
| SOCIO-387 Refugees in/ from the Arab world | Fall 2022 | Politics and Society in Modern South Asia | Fall 2023 |
| JOUR-390 Media and Religion | Spring 2024 | Foreign Policy Analysis | Spring 2024 |
MIT 220:
This course was an introduction to the study and structure of films. Through the course of the semester, we were exposed to films from various genres, cultures, and historical periods and asked to critique them by breaking them into the basic elements of film. At the start of the course, I was struggling to learn basic film vocabulary but towards the end was able to connect how different film elements such as mise en scene, framing, cinematography, sound etc work together to provide different narratives and aesthetics in films.
In hindsight, this course was not very relevant to my media and politics minor. However, it did teach me the necessary skills to analyze films and other moving-image media and taught me the right glossary of technical terms related to films. Now, I can apply this skillset to analyzing political films and documentaries.
Comparative Political Systems:
CPS is a mandatory course for Georgetown students and was my first course at Georgetown.
Over the semester, we examined different political systems around the world, the nature of democracy and autocracy, and internal and external challenges to political order. We also studied the origins and functions of states, formal institutions such as legislatures, executives, and judiciaries, and the variety and impact of electoral systems. Through case studies and cross-regional analysis, we looked at the impact of international and domestic factors on state performance.
I wrote my final paper on the comparative analysis of the successes and failures of the Arab Spring in different countries while focusing on Tunisia, the “lone success story” of the Arab Spring according to scholars and political scientists. One theme that intrigued me a lot while researching the Arab Spring was the use of social media which allowed protestors to organize demonstrations, disseminate information, and raise local and global awareness, eventually enabling the overthrow of rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Governments across the Arab region had different responses to social media – some used it to engage with citizens and involve them in government process. In contrast, others monitored internet traffic and cut off access to the internet altogether such as in the case of Egypt.
In hindsight, CPS taught me the skillset to compare and analyze the impact of local and international affairs across regions and political and electoral systems. My research into the Arab Spring made me more cognizant of the relationship between media and politics.
SOCIO-387 Refugees in/from the Arab world:
As the name suggests, this course was about displaced people and refugees in and from the Arab world, focusing on Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Sudan as case studies while defining others more collectively. We used sociological, ethnographic, and historical materials to examine the meaning of displacement, the challenges facing refugees in refugee camps, the work of local and international organizations as they respond to refugee influxes, and the way refugees are portrayed in the media.
One of my first assignments for this course was an essay on “The Politics of Media Representation: Syrian refugees in Turkey”, which got selected for the media and research awards as well. I analyzed how the depiction of Syrian refugees in Turkish media mimics Turkey’s changing political stance towards them – from being welcomed as “refugees” to being deported as “migrants”. The Syrian War has been raging on for 12 years now, causing forced displacement of 13 million Syrians – more than half of the country’s population. Turkey has hosted nearly 4 million Syrians, the largest refugee population worldwide, but ahead of the 2023 elections in the face of a tough opposition critical of Turkey’s refugee policy, Erdogan’s political stance towards Syrian refugees started crumbling and he announced that Turkey would help Syrian refugees relocate “voluntarily” to Syria, with the media representing this transition as well.
As the fourth estate, the media represents public opinion but also possesses the power to alter it. For example, the Syrian civil war started in 2010 but did not receive global attention until 2015 when the harrowing photograph of three-year-old Syrian refugee child, Alan Kurdi, made headlines and was circulated around the globe. The photograph showed Kurdi’s lifeless body as he lay face-down on a beach in Turkey after the rubber boat carrying his family to Greece capsized. That one photograph stirred up empathy and awareness regarding the Syrian refugee crisis more powerfully than shocking statistics regarding human casualties, human suffering, and violence in Syria.
My final group project for this class, titled “Home Through the Eyes of Third Generation Palestinians”, was a multimodal presentation on how the concept of home has evolved across generations of displaced Palestinians, the largest refugee community in the world. In addition to writing a research paper that concluded that most third-generation Palestinians who have never actually visited Palestine rely on the stories of their elders to capture the meaning of home and most importantly learn about the culture of their ancestors, we also produced a podcast with stories collected from our interviews with third generation Palestinians. Our project dealt with questions such as how important is narrative history, what are the effects of displacement on different displaced generations of Palestinians, what the right of return means for different people and how can people build a connection with a place they have never seen before.
This course furthered my understanding of how media depiction can be a direct representation of political stances and public opinion but also let me explore the power of media to amplify the voice of refugees. Being exposed to the work of anthropologists, sociologists, and historians as well as the voices of refugees themselves gave me the insight to engage with different “sources” of knowledge and different “formats” that it can be presented in – a vital skill for an aspiring journalist.
Politics and Society in Modern South Asia:
I took this course after a semester abroad on my journalism residency, and this was the first class on South Asian politics and society that I took during my university career. Before this, my understanding of South Asian studies was limited to my own personal knowledge and the course work covered during my high school education in Pakistan under the British curriculum. I was told that this was going to be a very reading-intensive and discussion-based class but my learning goals were clear from the start.
Through this course, I wanted to develop an interdisciplinary approach to South Asian politics and society through reading materials/ scholarship across multiple disciplines: history, anthropology, politics, sociology, economics, and political science. I also wanted to be able to perform a comparative analysis of post-colonial legacies, politics, identity formation, and development between different countries in South Asia, especially India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Moreover, I wanted to educate myself on regions of South Asia I know less about such as Sri Lanka and Nepal. As this was a student-led class, I had the opportunity to learn from my peers who either belonged to areas of South Asia I lacked knowledge about and/ or had produced research that could further complement my learning in class.
We engaged with different types of scholarship in this class, starting the semester with Ayesha Jalal’s books, “Democracy and Authoritarianism”, “Self and Sovereignty”, and “The Struggle for Pakistan”, and reading books such as Mridu Rai’s “Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects” on Kashmir, Judith Pettigrew’s “Maoists at the Hearth” on the Maoist revolution in Nepal, and Sharika Thirangama’s “In my Mother’s House” on the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka.
By the end of this course, I had an interdisciplinary understanding of the impact of postcolonial legacies on political practices in South Asia such as elections and patronage politics, and social relations such as the formation of ethnic disputes in India and Pakistan. I also have a nuanced insight on the politics of development whether it is the persistence of widening inequalities in India or the double-edged sword of microfinancing ventures in Bangladesh. This is interesting because this was not among my expected learning goals at the start of the semester. While I knew the course is called “politics and society in modern South Asia”, I expected to learn more about politics and less about society; hence going through readings on “becoming middle class” and “India’s aspiring but failing youth” came as an unexpected learning outcome that I am very grateful for.
This course gave me the skillset to situate my understanding of topics like ethnic conflict, marginalization of minorities, and formation of homelands with the contemporary news I consume regularly as a journalism major. I was also able to connect my learning of politics in South Asia with my existing knowledge of South Asian history from high school (British curricula) and challenge my existing knowledge where necessary. This class is one of my favorite courses I have taken during my entire undergraduate experience.
JOUR-390 Media and Religion:
This a course that I am currently taking.
In this class, we examine the potent forces of media and religion in what is arguably a “secular” age. We take a close look at the evolution of religious content in popular media (including entertainment, journalism, and religious broadcasting). We have also been introduced to key theories associated with digital media and looked at research methods to produce case studies of major media stories that started as or evolved into religion-based narratives, such as ISIS’s use of digital media; reactions and counter-reactions to the past acts of violence and more recent events; Western discourses appropriating religion for political advantage, such as the “Muslim Ban,” “Go home!” and “Burn Quran Day” etc; and appraisals of media handling of such flashpoints as the New Zealand mosque shootings, South Carolina church shootings, elections talking points, January 6 insurrection in Washington DC, and more.
In the first half of the semester, one key idea I was introduced to is how certain journalistic practices are informed by orientalist beliefs and how current journalistic framing contributes to the construction of Islamophobic stereotypes. The media, as the fourth estate, is essential in shaping public opinion but can also be used to perpetuate stereotypes. Muslims in the media are portrayed as oil suppliers at best and potential terrorists at worst. Following the 9/11 attacks in 2002, the media’s focus on sensational and conflict-driven narratives, coupled with a lack of nuanced and contextualized reporting, contributed to the proliferation of Islamophobic attitudes in mainstream discourse.
Foreign Policy Analysis:
This is also a course that I am currently taking and is the first course I have taken in the international relations realm. We started the course with a quick introduction to different theories of international relations such as realism, constructivism, and liberalism before employing these approaches to study of cases across the East and West, North and South. Each class is dedicated to a different country or international organization and includes a student presentation. This is a writing-intensive course that includes two reaction papers and two discussion posts per week.
Through this class, I am learning how the relationship between media and politics is manifested in foreign policy. Take the current ongoing war on Gaza for instance. Since October 7, President Biden himself has, twice, falsely stated he’s seen footage and images of ‘40 beheaded Israeli babies’. Instead of applying pressure on Israel to scale back its campaign, as it did eventually in previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the United States has, instead, opted to continue pushing for continued bombardment – twice rejecting Congress’ pleas for a ceasefire.
The U.S. media has been a mouthpiece for American foreign policy, working hard to brand October 7 as Israel’s “9/11”. Anyone who challenges this narrative is called an “October 7 denier” which like Holocaust deniers is an anti-Semitic label. Even as the current death toll in Palestine reaches more than 31,000 (most recent), U.S. media is branding this continued genocide as the “Israel-Hamas” war. In the days following October 7, in addition to vilifying Hamas to complement U.S. foreign policy, the media focused on manufactured hysteria of antisemitism on U.S. campuses – where organizing for Palestinian liberation has been the strongest and loudest – and helped build the case for the bombardment of Gaza through the dehumanization of Palestinians and erasure of Palestinian claims to history, justice, and injury. In a fashion similar to – but much more explicit than – the manufacturing of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War, the U.S. news media has manufactured a story about and since October 7 that obfuscates Israeli-perpetuated and American-funded genocide against the Palestinian people.