The Identity Group in Political Scienc is hosting the first series of the Identity Workshop. Workshops aim to provide a venue in which graduate students and faculty interested in Identity issues from across campus can share their research.  The workshops are available to present drafts of articles, books, dissertation chapters and prospectuses, conference papers, job talks as well as ideas about future research. 

Presented by: Sinan Isik, PhD Student, Political Science

Racial Images Using the Biohazard Metaphor in US Media

In the last two decades it has become increasingly common for US politicians and public officials to make comments that are explicitly discriminatory towards people from the Middle East, often in the form of an analogy between people from this region and a contagious biohazard. I will present evidence that this racial image connects to a history in US and European media portraying “undesirable” minority groups as a biohazard. My framework will engage with literature from communications, comparative literature, sociology, and political science to provide the context for this image formation. I will use the example of an increased trend in zombie media to explain how this racial image is primed and framed, and how it allows these comments to resonate.