Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in Marvel Studios' MS. MARVEL. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
A study led by Annenberg Professor Aswin Punathambekar examines how Muslim creators are using shows on Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, and Peacock to move beyond tokenistic diversity by building entire cultural worlds — through music, language, and transnational collaboration — that reimagine what it means to be Muslim in the West.
Does representation in mainstream media deliver the social change it promises? Or have we mistaken visibility for progress, celebrating symbolic inclusion while systemic inequalities remain firmly in place?
Propelled by these questions, the study by Punathambekar and his co-authors attempts to go beyond an emphasis on representation in media, turning instead to the idea of worldmaking in order to “make representation matter anew.”
As shows like Netflix’s Mo, Hulu's Ramy, Disney+'s Ms. Marvel, Channel 4's We Are Lady Parts, and the BBC's Man Like Mobeen make breakthroughs in media representation — specifically around “Muslimness” — “they also represent a unique moment in media history, defined by streaming services and social media,” said Punathambekar.
Drawing from the work of media sociologist Herman Gray, the authors — which include Julia Giese of Loughborough University, Diwas Bisht of University of Salford, and Annenberg doctoral student Sim Gill — analyze the link between media representation, as seen in these shows, and social change, in a paper titled “Streaming video and diasporic worldmaking: Race, ethnicity, and religion in the Anglophone West,” published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. The study is one of three that look at race, ethnicity, and gender in the UK, funded by the British Academy.
“We focused…