Wazhmah Osman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University. Her research focuses on global and transnational media, media development in conflict and post-conflict areas, democracy, and public sphere formation.
In Post 9/11 Afghanistan, debates about women’s rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam are part of the fabric of local and international development efforts to “nation-build”. The medium at the heart of the most public and politically charged of these debates, instigating often violent cultural clashes is television. Afghan media producers, like the wider public, are caught between warring ideologies and political economies that range from “Islamist” to commercial to “developmentalist”. Osman’s lecture focuses on her work examining the role of media in the development of the public sphere in Afghanistan, the cultural contestations that it is inspiring, and the political economies that sustain it.
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Humanities Lecture: Afghanistan and TV
Wazhmah Osman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University. Her research focuses on global and transnational media, media development in conflict and post-conflict areas, democracy, and public sphere formation.
In Post 9/11 Afghanistan, debates about women’s rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam are part of the fabric of local and international development efforts to “nation-build”. The medium at the heart of the most public and politically charged of these debates, instigating often violent cultural clashes is television. Afghan media producers, like the wider public, are caught between warring ideologies and political economies that range from “Islamist” to commercial to “developmentalist”. Osman’s lecture focuses on her work examining the role of media in the development of the public sphere in Afghanistan, the cultural contestations that it is inspiring, and the political economies that sustain it.