Mark Allen Peterson

Introduction

Mark Allen Peterson specializes in global flows of culture, including news and entertainment media, digital media, marketing, and consumption in relation to class and political change. He conducts research in Egypt, India, and the U.S. He has studied the roles of media in the Egyptian revolution; and as a former political journalist, Peterson blogs at Connected in Cairo.

Education

Ph.D., Anthropology, Brown University

Teaching

Dr. Peterson teaches courses in Cultural Anthropology and International Studies. His courses focus on several different aspects of globalization, particularly intercultural relations, diaspora, gaming and media, with specializations in the areas of the Middle East, South Asia, and the United States.

Research

Dr. Peterson's research interests include globalization and localization processes, mass media, the anthropology of news and journalism, new information technologies, modernity, nationalism and transnationalism, and semiotics, drama, and spectacle. He's carried out fieldwork in Egypt, India, and the United States.

Dr. Peterson is the author of Connected in Cairo: Growing up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East (Indiana University Press, 2011), Anthropology and Mass Communication: Media and Myth in the New Millennium (Berghahn Books, 2003), and coauthor of International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues, Fourth edition (Westview, 2017)

He has published 22 research articles and 16 book chapters.

Collaboration

Professor Peterson is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the AAA Middle East Section, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and the Media Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

He's also on the editorial board of CyberOrient, an on-line journal of contemporary Middle East studies, and is Co-Editor of the Anthropology of Media book series with Berghahn Publishing.