Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East

Michael Butter, University of Freiburg, Germany; Maurus Reinkowski, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East is the first book to approach conspiracy theorizing from a decidedly comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Whereas previous studies have engaged with conspiracy theories within national frameworks only, this collection of essays draws attention to the fact that conspiracist visions are transnational narratives that travel between and connect different cultures. It focuses on the United States and the Middle East because these two regions of the world are entangled in manifold ways and conspiracy theories are currently extremely prominent in both.

The contributors to the volume are scholars of Middle Eastern Studies, Anthropology, History, Political Science, Cultural Studies, and American Studies, who approach the subject from a variety of different theories and methodologies. However, all of them share the fundamental assumption that conspiracy theories must not be dismissed out of hand or ridiculed. Usually wrong and frequently dangerous, they are nevertheless articulations of and distorted responses to needs and anxieties that must be taken seriously. Focusing on individual case studies and displaying a high sensitivity for local conditions and the cultural environment, the essays offer a nuanced image of the workings of conspiracy theories in the United States and the Middle East.

The linguae & litterae series, edited by Peter Auer, Gesa von Essen and Werner Frick, documents the research activities of the School of Language and Literature of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). These research activities in literary studies and linguistics are characterized by an approach that is theoretically and methodologically state of the art and interdisciplinarily open.

In linguistics the accent is on the corpus-based, quantitative and qualitative investigation of language; in literary studies the focus is on the comparative, transdisciplinary analysis of literary phenomena in their cultural contexts. At the same time the series deals with the productive interfaces and synergies between modern linguistics and literary studies (as well as the humanities, social and natural sciences with which they interact). It seeks a new, contemporary reformulation of the humanities research curriculum and its problem and concept orientation for the future.

The series has a clear international orientation - each volume is multilingual, containing German, English and French contributions and, depending on the volume, articles in Italian or Spanish as well. Each individual volume is peer reviewed by an international editorial board.

Each year 2-4 volumes are published.