At a time when relations between the United States and the Middle East seem to be based on mutual misunderstandings, intolerance, violence, and distrust, this cutting-edge collection of essays reveals that the history of this relationship is richer and more complex than recent events suggest. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, relations between the Middle East and the United States were generally quite positive. After World War I, as U.S. policy toward the region took on aspects of European-style imperialism, the relationship began to sour. Written by leading scholars from literary, historical, and political science backgrounds, these essays examine a range of encounters. They analyze early American missionary efforts in the Middle East, views of New York City in Arabic literature, and the development of Middle East studies as an academic field in the United States. Archaeological expeditions, twentieth-century diplomatic relations, and the current war on terror are also discussed.

Introduction. From "disinterested benevolence" to "benevolent hegemony" : the development of the U.S./Middle Eastern relationship / Magnus T. Bernhardsson -- On the formal study of Near Eastern languages in America, 1770-1930 / Benjamin R. Foster -- American Palestine : Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and the Holy Land in the nineteenth-century American Imagination / Hilton Obenzinger -- "Drying up the Euphrates" : Muslims, Millennialism, and Early American missionary enterprise / Timothy Marr -- Missionaries, Peasants, and the protection problem : negotiating Coptic reform in nineteenth-century Egypt / Paul D. Sedra -- "Is this not the ugliest of treacheries?!" diplomacy, culture, and the origins of Anti-Americanism in Egypt / Erez Manela -- U.S./Iranian relations, 1911-1951 / Mansour Bonakdarian -- Khomeini's great satan : demonizing the American other in the Islamic Revolution in Iran / Abbas Amanat -- "Besotted with the bright lights of imperialism"? Arab subjectivity constructed against New York's many faces / Michelle Hartman -- Christian Zionism and its impact on U.S. foreign policy / Lawrence Davidson -- A cultural history of the war without end / Melani McAlister.