Dr. Jack G. Shaheen (1935-2017) dedicated his career to identifying and contesting damaging stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in US popular media. Shaheen authored several books including The TV Arab (1984), Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11 (2008), and the award-winning Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001, 2009), which the Media Education Foundation produced as a documentary in 2006. He served as an Oxford Research Scholar and as a consultant for the Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and New York City’s Commission on Civil Rights. Shaheen was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU.
A professor, author, and professional film consultant, Shaheen and his wife Bernice collected and analyzed materials which depicted Arabs and Muslims as the “cultural other.” The Jack G. Shaheen Papers contain nearly 3,000 motion pictures (spanning from late nineteenth-century silent films to contemporary Hollywood productions) and television programs (including comedies, dramas, cartoons, and commercials) on DVD and VHS tapes, a selection of which have been digitized. Paper ephemera in the archive comprises editorial cartoons, motion picture posters and stills, comic books, and advertisements. Also included in the collection are film and television scripts, books, magazines, toys, and games. His extensive collection provides valuable documentation of the representations of Arabs and Muslims in US popular culture and mass media from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century.
The Jack G. Shaheen Collection on Arabs in US Film and Television is housed in multiple repositories at New York University. To access the contents of the collection, please download this collection guide and contact the appropriate repository.
The Jack G. Shaheen Collection on Arabs in US Film and Television is housed in multiple repositories at New York University. To access the contents of the collection, please review this collection guide and contact the appropriate repository.
Related resources:
2019-20 Jack G. Shaheen Research Grants, a call for proposals to conduct research in the Jack G. Shaheen Collection
A is for Arab: Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture, a traveling exhibition featuring items from the Jack G. Shaheen Collection
A is for Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture, a publication featuring items from the Jack G. Shaheen Collection
Reel Arabs vs. Real Arabs: Historicizing/Critiquing/Remaking the Arab Image in Popular Culture, create your own film program with introductions from Jack G. Shaheen