Mark Allen Peterson

Biography

Mark Allen Peterson, Ph.D. studies and teaches about media, technology, and global cultural flows. He has lived and worked in Egypt, India, and the United States. He teaches ATH 327 "Pokemon: Local and Global Cultures," ATH 337 "Play, Game, and Design," and ATH 345 "Global Media Ethnography." He is the author of Anthropology & Mass Communication (2003), Connected in Cairo (2011), and COVID Semiotics (2025).

Education Credentials

Ph.D., Anthropology, Brown University

Teaching Areas

Professor 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 Interests

Professor 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.

Professor 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.

Listing of Select Publications

• In Press. COVID Semiotics: An Anthropology of Magical Thinking. Mark Allen Peterson and Colleen Cotter, eds. Routledge.
• 2023. “Media Anthropology and the Challenges of Digital Media.” The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology, edited by Elisabetta Costa, Patricia G. Lange, Nell Haynes, and Jolynna Sinanan. Routledge.
• 2021. “Media, Sovereignty and Cybersecurity” In International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues 5th edition.
• 2021 “The Anthropology of Media” (with John Postill, first author)) The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems / Social Sciences and Humanities / Ethnology, Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology. UNESCO.
• 2017c “Mediated Experience in the Egyptian Revolution” In Digital Middle East: State and Society in the Information Age. Mohamed Zayat, ed. Pp. 85-108. Oxford University Press.
• 2017b “Media, Markets and Political Economy: Examining and Analyzing Power.” Routledge Handbook of Language and Media. Colleen Cotter and Daniel Perrin, eds. Pp. 151-163. Routledge.
• 2017a “The Syrian Civil War and the Rise of the Islamic State” In International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues. 4th edition.  Sheldon Anderson, Mark Allen Peterson, and Stanley W. Toops.  Pp. 401-409. Westview.
• 2015e “Speaking of news: Press, democracy, and metapragmatics in a changing India.” American Ethnologist 42(4): 673–687.
• 2015d “New Media and Electronic Networks in the Middle East” In Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East. Soraya Altorki, ed. Pp. 509-525. Wiley-Blackwell.
• 2015c “In Search of Antistructure: The Meaning of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Social Drama” Chapter for Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality. Edited by Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra. Pp. 164-182. Berghahn Books.
• 2015b “Re-Envisioning Tahrir: The Changing Meanings of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution.” In Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles. Pp. 64-82. Routledge.
• 2015a “Katibs and Computers: Innovation and Ideology in the Urdu Newspaper Revival.” In Innovation as Social Change in South Asia: Transforming Hierarchies. Minna Säävälä and Sirpa Tenhunen, eds. Pp. 13-25. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. (Reprint of 2014d)
• 2014d “Katibs and Computers: Innovation and Ideology in the Urdu Newspaper Revival.” Contemporary South Asia 22(2): 130-142.
• 2013 “Connecting Media: Understanding Indexical Practice.” Tsantsa, Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Association 18: 86-95.
• 2012f “The Veil Controversy.” In International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues 2nd edition. Sheldon Anderson, Jeanne A.K. Hey, Mark Allen Peterson, and Stanley W. Toops. Westview.
• 2012e “International Terrorism.” In International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues 2nd edition. Sheldon Anderson, Jeanne A.K. Hey, Mark Allen Peterson, and Stanley W. Toops. Westview.
• 2012a “Ethnography as Theory and Method in the Study of Political Communication” With Debra Spitulnik (first author). Holli A. Semetko and Margaret Scammell [eds] The Sage Handbook of Political Communication. London: Sage.
• 2011c “Toward an Ethnography of Contingency in the Egyptian Uprisings” Anthropologies 9
• 2011b “Egypt's Media Ecology in a Time of Revolution” Arab Media and Society 13 Summer. Reprinted in Eurasian Review: News and Analysis Nov. 10.
• 2011a Connected in Cairo: Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East. Indiana University Press.
• 2010d. “‘But It Is My Habit to Take the Times’: Metaculture and Practice in the Reading of Indian Newspapers.” Theorizing Media and Practice. Birgit Brauchler and John Postill, eds. Berghahn.
• 2010c “Agents of Hybridity: Class, Culture Brokers, and the Entrepreneurial Imagination in Cosmopolitan Cairo.” Research in Economic Anthropology 30: 225-256.
• 2010b “Imsukuhum Kulhum! Modernity and Morality in Egyptian Children’s Consumption.” Journal of Consumer Culture 10(2): 233-253.
• 2010a “Journalism as Trope” Anthropology News 51(4): 8-9.
• 2009b “What Is the Point of Media Anthropology?” Social Anthropology 17(3): 337-340, 342- 344.
• 2009a “Getting the News in New Delhi.” The Anthropology of News and Journalism. Elizabeth Bird, ed. Pp. 267-288. Indiana University Press.
• 2007c “Intercultural Relations: Anthropology for International Communication” In International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues. Sheldon Anderson, Jeanne A.K. Hey, Mark Allen Peterson, Charles Stevens, and Stanley W. Toops. Pp. 103-130. Westview.
• 2007b “Making Global News: ‘Freedom of Speech’ and ‘Muslim Rage’ in U.S. Journalism” Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life 1(3): 247-264.
• 2007a “From Jinn to Genies: Intertextuality, Media, and the Rise of Global Folklore.” In Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture. Mikel J. Koven and Sharon Sherman, ed. Pp. 93-112. Utah State University Press.
• 2006a “Technologies of Connecting and the Teaching of Anthropology.” Teaching Anthropology 12(2): 24-27.
• 2005b “The Jinn and the Computer: Consumption and Identity in Arabic Children’s Magazines.” In Childhood 12(2): 177 - 200.
• 2005a “Performing Media: Toward an Ethnography of Intertextuality.” In Media Anthropology, Mihai Coman and Eric Rothenbuhler, eds. Pp. 129-138. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Books.
• 2004a “Accessing Egypt: Making Myths and Producing Web Sites in Cyber-Cairo.” New Reviews in Hypermedia and Multimedia 10(2): 199-219. With Ivan Panovic (second author).
• 2003c Anthropology and Mass Communication. Berghahn Books.
• 2003b “American warriors speaking American: The metapragmatics of performance in the nation state.” In At War With Words. Mirjana N. Dedaic and Daniel N. Nelson, eds. Pp. 421-448. Walter de Gruyter.
• 2003a “Language ideology and the politics of performance.” Teaching Anthropology 9(2): 20- 22, 37-38.
• 2002b “Aliens, Ape-Men and Whacky Savages: The Anthropologist in the Tabloids.” In The Best of Anthropology Today. Jonathan Benthall, ed. London and New York: Routledge. (Reprint of 1991a)
• 2002a “Choosing the wasteland: The social construction of self as viewer in the U.S.” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(6).
• 2001c “Situations and interpretations: Explorations in interpretive practice.” (With William O. Beeman, first author) Introduction to special issue of Anthropological Quarterly 74(4): 159-162.
• 2001b “Getting to the story: Off-the-record discourse and interpretive practice in American journalism.” Anthropological Quarterly 74(4): 201-211.
• 2001a “Unlocking the power of the internet in postsecondary education.” In Information Technology in Egypt: Challenges and Impact. Pp. 14-36. Mahmoud Farag, ed. The American University in Cairo. With Samy Akabawy (second author), Brent Carper (first author), John Hill (fifth author) and Dan Tschirgi (fourth author).
• 2000b “For as long as I can remember, anthropology has been reinventing itself. An interview with Donald Powell Cole.” Nomadic Peoples (4) 2: 7-20.
• 2000a “Nahwa il ‘Umiya: Discursive dissonance in women’s literacy classes.” In Research and Education in Egypt: A Millennial Assessment. Pp. 272-293. Mahmoud Farag, ed. The American University in Cairo. With Moyra Dale (first author)
• 1999a “Computer khatbas: Databases and marital entrepreneurship in modern Cairo.” With Shereen Ali Abu Hashish (first author). Anthropology Today 15(6): 7-11.
• 1999b “Communication and cultural identity: Language policy and ‘human development’ in India and the United States.” In Human Development for the 21 st Century. Pp. 230-242. Mahmoud Farag, ed. The American University in Cairo.
• 1998a “Languages of globalization: Modernity and authority.” In Globalization: Blessing or Curse? Mahmoud Farag, ed. Pp. 119-127. The American University in Cairo.
• 1998b “The rhetoric of epidemic in India: News coverage of AIDS.” Alif: The Journal of Comparative Poetics. 18: 237-268.
• 1991a “Aliens, ape-men and whacky savages: Anthropologists in the tabloids.” Anthropology Today 7(5): 4-7.
• 1991b “Defining worlds: The semantics of development.” Brown Forum on Third World Affairs 1(1) December.