About

Natalie Khazaal is an Associate Professor in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Arabic and Middle East & North Africa programs. She holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA and is a Dabney Adams Hart Distinguished Visiting Professor at Agnes Scott College. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of media, language, and power, with particular attention to disenfranchisement, racism, and speciesism in representation, critical animal studies, atheism in Arabic-speaking communities, gender and audience reception, and the cultural and political dynamics of Lebanon and the broader Middle East and North Africa region. Khazaal is the author of 'Pretty Liar: Television, Language, and Gender in Wartime Lebanon' and co-editor of several volumes including 'Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World.' Her work has received international recognition, and she has contributed to public discourse through media appearances and film consultations. Her teaching interests include Arab culture and media, globalization, language and power, critical media literacy, and the cultural politics of representation.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Epistemology
• Law
• Computer Security
• Philosophy
• Political economy
• Criminology
• Media studies
• Environmental ethics
• Gender studies
• Social psychology
• Religious studies
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test finds Oscars so AnthropoScenic in contemporary animated films

  Frontiers in Communication · 2026-01-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Introduction Animation transfers human races into animals, serving as a prime site for speciesism and racism. Methods Testing this observation on recent examples, our quantitative/qualitative study delves into a nine-year (2016-2024) span of Oscar-nominated animated feature and short films. We theorize how to make incisive, quantitative/qualitative, balanced trans-species intersectionality the foundation of critical research on racism and speciesism. We offer the Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism Test (MARS test), a practical tool accessible to scholars, creators, and general viewers for analyzing character portrayals and interactions, helping identify and challenge normalized racist and speciesist storylines. Results Insufficient number of films yielded transspecies allyship. Discussion The MARS test is for anyone who is interested in ways film and other media offer questionable implications regarding racism and speciesism that call for accountability.

  PublisherDOI

• Editorial: Media, racism, speciesism: issues and solutions for creaturely racism in the anthropocene

  Frontiers in Communication · 2026-04-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  1. because of the historical roots of human-animal hierarchies and how colonial humananimal hierarchies reorganized relations leading to the increase of racial oppression; 2. because animal industries are deeply entangled with racialized labor exploitation; 3. because environmental racism, anti-immigrant violence, border regimes, and species displacement intersect; 4. because historically and today, legal exclusion, surveillance, captivity, and incarceration operate across race and species; 5. because non-consenting nonhuman animals are exploited as tools of oppression against racialized human groups; 6. and because speciesism functions as a framework for dehumanizing racialized communities and individuals, while excluding nonhuman animals from moral consideration.The media plays a key role in shaping how we see and value or devalue human and nonhuman lives. The current issue, therefore, addresses two core questions: First, how does the media shape the links between racial hierarchies and the mistreatment of nonhuman beings? Second, how do media portrayals of nonhuman animals reinforce or challenge racism? Addressing these questions requires examining the ethical standards the media uses to avoid or reproduce the two biases individually or in combination, as well as reflecting on issues and opportunities in this process.Ethical media standards emerge over many decades with contributions from the public, individual journalists, scholars, politicians, and related organizations. Scholarly studies are particularly noteworthy because they analyze the current state of the ethical standards, their social acceptance, their benefits or failures, and suggest effective revisions. The ethical media standards related to racism and speciesism separately are at different levels of sophistication and successful implementation. While ethical media standards addressing racism separately have a longer history and have produced at least some tangible effects, comparable standards concerning speciesism remain largely underdeveloped. So what are the ethical norms and userfriendly standards the media should be held up to when it comes to how it shapes attitudes and consequent behavior jointly impacting race and species?Decades of political struggles, public social pressure, and academic analyses have forced mainstream media to recognize how it contributes to harmful narratives about racial minorities and other marginalized populations and to course-correct. The Oscar Awards, for instance, implemented strategic changes after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy (2015-16) and the creation of the DuVernay test (2016)-a popular tool that evaluates diversity and race representation in the media, which follows in the spirit of the Bechdel test (1985) on gender representation. Prolific scholarship has also interrogated the media's role in representing diversity and reproducing racial and ethnic stereotypes since the turn of the century (Dixon & Mastro, 2024).The field of media and communication studies nowadays shows a greater normative commitment to exposing how cultural, social, political, and economic practices are bound up with broader power structures, including classism, sexism, racism, imperialism, and ethnocentrism (Almiron et al., 2016;Fuchs, 2011).This critical racial turn in media and communication studies is encouraging. These efforts remain incomplete, underscoring the need for sustained theoretical development and systematic analysis of algorithmic racialized bias, race and nonhuman animals, racialized affect in media, global perspectives on race, etc. However, similar to critical fields more generally, the violence directed toward nonhuman animals beyond a broad species focus has largely remained overlooked. Such omission often occurs even in studies emphasizing the interconnections of systems of domination, in other words, that the systems which produce representational hierarchies among humans also structure the ways the media renders nonhuman animals visible or rather keeps them invisible. How, then, should we investigate the ways in which media representations often obscure how human power operates in relation to the planet and its nonhuman inhabitants? How should we analyze the consequences and forms of resistance that such depictions generate (Parkinson & Herring, 2024)? To address this issue, Claire Parkinson proposes the concept of "mediated encounters" rather than representation. This term reflects how media depictions act as meeting points, not just symbols for human use among:the institutional, social, and industrial practices and processes that reshape nonhuman animals into commodified narrative agents, the affective dimensions and emotional appeals that are involved, and the reception of such encounters by human audiences. (Parkinson, 2019, p. 3) While most critical communication analyses tend to bypass nonhuman animals, a few exceptions take into account how media discourses affect the representations of nonhuman animals. They tend to address how wider systems of production later absorb, reshape, or instrumentalize nonhuman animals, reinforcing and legitimizing specific practices and relationships (Molloy, 2011). For example, the concept of speciesism-the set of ideas that privileges the human species over all others (Nibert, 2003;Almiron et al., 2016)-has also helped critical communication scholars to overcome the narrow focus of humanism and social justice that exclude other species as morally irrelevant. Instead, analyzing speciesism allows us to acknowledge that nonhuman animals deserve moral consideration. Studies on nonhuman animals' representation in film (Parkinson, 2019;Malamud, 2016) journalism (Rossi, 2025;Khazaal & Almiron, 2021;Khazaal & Almiron, 2014;Freeman, 2009), advertising (Linné & Pedersen, 2016;Stănescu, 2016), and social media (Lupton 2023;Linné 2016) consistently demonstrate processes of othering, distortion, and erasure of their lived realities. These studies show how unequal power relations frame mediated encounters with nonhuman animals and reduce them to human-serving categories-whether as symbols, companions, vermin, prey, commodities, threats, or machines-depending on what suits human interests (Almiron et al., 2016;Cole & Stewart, 2014).Much of this critical-lens research acknowledges the need for higher ethical media standards regarding species. It argues for dismantling the anthropocentric status quo that produces unprecedented threats to life on earth and switching to a holistic understanding of a larger global, interlocking, system of domination (Almiron et al., 2016). Appeals to animal subjectivity are also powerful means of crafting alternative narratives about other species, which can do important political work (Parkinson, 2019). In 2014, scholars Debra Merskin and Carrie Freeman introduced www.animalsandmedia.org as part of a broader effort to transform media practices and ethical standards. The site provides style guidelines aimed at professionals in journalism, advertising, public relations, and entertainment media (including television and film), outlining practical advice for portraying nonhuman animals fairly, accurately, and with respect (Freeman & Merskin 2015). This easy-to-use guide offers professional ethics-oriented suggestions that are modeled in part on the tradition of human minority advocacy groups that have long issued media guidelines to counter misrepresentation, and on research into the possibilities of treating nonhuman animals as legitimate news sources (Freeman et al., 2011).Given how the ethical standards for the media's role in shaping racism and speciesism have remained siloed, Etsuko Kinefuchi assesses the state of the field, examining three of the top five US newspapers over nearly four decades in her article, "Where Injustices (Fail to) Meet: Newspaper Coverage of Speciesism, Animal Rights, and Racism" in the current issue. She examines how the themes of racism, speciesism, and animal rights intersect to find that (1) the idea of speciesism has been nonexistent in the majority of the news media despite wide interest from the public and scholarly disciplines; (2) when speciesism and racism have been connected, the connection has been unexplained and the terms used ornamentally; and (3) as a consequence the small number of articles that have taken the connection seriously have rejected it, defending speciesism and an alleged incongruence between anti-racism and anti-speciesism. Since this hierarchical dualism is central to colonization and to naturalizing the master-subject privilege, she concludes that we need a broad public conversation about how the two systems reinforce each other. Kinefuchi's research points to the great need for multiplatform media today-from reporter training to journalism ethics and practice-to reform how these interwoven systems are understood and reported. Her work offers empirical grounding for expanding media's ethical standards. It also illuminates how white privilege could be addressed within animal rights discourse, demonstrating how diverse constituencies can benefit from structural changes in the media.To advance efforts toward fostering a broad public conversation about how the two systems reinforce each other, Natalie Khazaal, Ellen Gorsevski, and Tobias Linné propose a new theoretical approach and a practical methodological tool to ethical media standards that capture the interconnection between racism and speciesism in their article "Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) Test Finds Oscars so AnthropoScenic in Contemporary Animated Films" in the current issue. So far, no practical strategy effectively integrating the analysis of both discrimination systems has been convincingly proposed. By creating a user-friendly illustrated test they call "Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS)" test, the authors address this urgent need to equip researchers, students, and general audiences with a tool for evidence-based analysis of the uses of racism and speciesism in the media. To assess the validity of the MARS test, the authors apply it to one of the most impactful global arenas where racism and speciesism are fused-Oscar-nominated films, with a focus specifically on animation (the MARS test could also guide exploration of media fields beyond animation). Based on a nine-year sample (2016-2024), they show that animated short and feature Oscar nominees lag behind current trends in audience preferences (#OscarsSoWhite, etc.). With its three sections (Animated Nonhuman Animals, Animated Humans, and Animated Intersections) and a total of 15 questions, the illustrated test and the accompanying guide to its application represent a convenient technique to assess the presence ("Yes" answers) or absence ("No" answers) of injustice as applied to portrayals in animated media that encompass human characters and nonhuman animal characters. Bringing in considerations such as nonhuman animal standpoints (perspectives) and lifeworlds, successes/failures to address the marginalization of minoritized humans, and how negative attitudes toward nonhuman animals can reify racist harms, this article charts a new course in theorizing and testing for the shared roots and impacts of racism and speciesism.Turning ethical guidelines into common practice faces challenges. Indeed, there are numerous examples of how news, entertainment, and social media continue to spread unethical, inhumane, and even violent accounts of nonhuman animals as "humorous" stories and memes, often also reinforcing racist narratives (Plec, 2016). Emily Major's article, "Slayers, Rippers, and Blitzes: Dark Humor and the Justification of Cruelty to Possums in Online Media in New Zealand," discusses this issue with examples from online news published in New Zealand between 2016 and 2023 about the brush tail possum-an alleged "pest" often portrayed as a national enemy. These marsupials were introduced by colonial settlers from their native Australia to the largely mammal-free New Zealand in 1858 to establish a fur trade but escaped into the wild where they were able to multiply without any natural predators to keep their populations from impacting local flora or fauna. Major's article looks closely at the framing of possums through language and images that were used to support, reinforce, and police speciesist narratives after the creation of the Predator Free 2050 eradication campaign that sought to eradicate all invasive rats, stoats, and possums. Confirming previous research showing themes of militancy and economy, she also explores discourses that employ dark humor, which trivializes the cruel treatment of possums and creates a culture of transspecies racism and speciesist xenophobia that presents cruelty as patriotism. Importantly, as Major illustrates, the representation of "pest" animals in mass media can reflect wider societal attitudes about human belonging, race, and purity. These media representations contribute to and legitimize forms of cruelty not only to possums and other species stereotyped as "pests," but also to those human beings ostracized as condemned "others." However, as Major also points out, it is possible to imagine this differently, envisioning a new media ethics through critical readings. Instead of being represented as invasive villains and the target of jokes that poke fun at their mistreatment, possums could be reimagined as unwilling victims of colonization, who were forcibly introduced to an unfamiliar land, where they were exploited, consumed, and persecuted-a story painfully familiar to many human groups.In addition to "humorous" stories, prejudices and violent ideologies like carnivorism often use speciesism to assert racism. Two articles in the current issue expose this trend's intertwining of racism and speciesism. The first is the article "Long Live the Liver King: Right-Wing Carnivorism and the Digital Dissemination of Primal Rhetoric" by David Rooney, S. Marek Muller and Cecilia Cerja. In this rhetorical study of alt-right online texts and their links to the consumption of animals as food, the authors analyze the production and dissemination of "carnivore diets" and the associations between diet, fitness, muscularity, and masculinity. Taking a theoretical starting point in the discursive intersections of animality, hegemonic masculinity, and white nationalism, the authors use empirical material posted online by Carnivore Diet gurus the Liver King and the Raw Egg Nationalist to show how the political right's fascination with animal consumption is intimately tied to circulating cultural narratives about masculinity-in-crisis, and white masculinity in particular. Importantly, they point to how what they call "Primal rhetorical networks," concerned with narratives mythologizing Modern Man's physical and spiritual downfall and the potential for his resurrection through the consumption of nonhuman animal flesh, function as "carnivorous radicalization pipelines." While such wording and symbols may begin with diet and wellness, they ultimately end at cis-heterosexist white nationalism as the carnivore influencers on digital platforms beckon followers toward speciesist worldviews reliant on racist tropes.Likewise, Lauren Corman's article "'Pageantry of Aggression': QAnon, Animality, and the Violent Pursuit of Whiteness" explores the connections between far-right movements, racism and speciesism. Extending the theme of primal rhetoric premised upon reclaiming a spiritual "wild-ness," Corman finds these discourses and symbols work to tie the consumption of nonhuman animals to white nationalist ideals. She analyzes U.S. media reports and commentaries published shortly after the January 6 th , 2021, Capitol insurrection. Attention centers on the striking images of Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman," during the January 6th riothis face painted with the American flag and his body draped in faux regalia evoking a virtual menagerie of animals, including coyote, buffalo, and eagle. As Corman argues, the politics of QAnon are infused with the politics of whiteness, and Chansley showcased a curated animality, a sartorial representation that was anything but benign. Rather, it could be seen as a tool of white supremacy, an "animalized physicality" that became an emblem for the far-right. The article shows how this animalized attire and Chansley's ability to play at the borderlands between human and animal, civilized and uncivilized, can be read not only as an enactment of white supremacy, but also as a racism conjoined with speciesist legacies. White men like Jacob Chansley have never had their humanity questioned, nor likened to animals to degrade them. His human status is a necessary given, which enables him to use this curated animality as a tool of white supremacy; like a mascot branding a sports team.Major's, Rooney/Muller/Cerja's, and Corman's articles showcase how audiences, mass media, the film industry, as well as social media users, content and and to a all to racism and speciesism. However, each research also points to how the tools that us such can be all studies in this issue to advance the idea that transspecies is necessary to address both For example, on the intersections of race and animality in a different media and article, in a The of The to not only with the but also the of a potential of These popular shape how in moral and can their attitudes toward marginalized including those by race or as well as toward nonhuman animals. As the authors can function as a for ethical and moral in new and unfamiliar and the of the its of They find that which characters human and animal of While can be to other beings within the in and ethics also the of toward greater of This the that all popular are violent or while emphasizing the of and to ethical research that media, from to can be held for more and article, Speciesism, and in of the the for a of where animal, and human are how the of rights and justice should and are expanding and that to the of to and to these moral are we to overcome the global, social, and of the For example, how nonhuman animals' mistreatment within the it the of addressing both racism and speciesism. argues that justice encompass speciesism and perspectives because the of and humans, particularly marginalized of within the racist at great to ways the media as the impacts of while also uses of media for justice His holistic enables us to to the of the while also us in a more for nonhuman animals and humans which could and this issue to contribute to the envisioning of such a new media By fostering media research that racist and speciesist narratives often in this issue the interconnections and of racism and speciesism. The articles also the of media news and social media platforms to and animated well as the ethical of audiences, us in key we are the media This exploration can a starting point for a new media ethics that addresses the diverse ways in which the and of racism and speciesism intersect in different mediated forms of It can contribute to the development of a media ethics of the speciesist and racist and in cultural Such an approach a media that is both and fostering resistance and both and for in

  PublisherDOI

• Redesigning a Foreign Language Course With the Help of AI

  Advances in educational technologies and instructional design book series · 2024-02-12 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter evaluates the use of AI for redesigning a foreign (Arabic) language course to significantly incorporate several SDGs. The course provides conditions for experiential learning where students examine their impact on the planet, make meaningful improvements to their lifestyles to lower their carbon footprint, and grow as thoughtful global citizens. It also stimulates students to reflect on the differences between Western and Arab countries' engagement with sustainability goals through real-world scenarios. The analysis focuses on the positive contributions and challenges that AI presents toward the redesigning goal. In particular, it explores how using AI technology in class and for creating course materials affects HIPs elements: significant time on task; frequent, timely feedback; substantive interactions with faculty, peers, and diverse people and ideas; structured reflection and integration of learning; real-world applications; public demonstration of competence; significant learning elements: foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, and learning to learn.

  PublisherDOI

• Bias hiding in plain sight: Decades of analyses suggest US media skews anti-Palestinian

  2024-02-29 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Poetics of Atheism

  2024-05-17

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The consumption of Mohamed Choukri’s work suggests that (1) prominent Western readers have either interpreted him as an exotic specimen of the Islamic Orient, or only mentioned in passing that he attacks religion, and (2) the religious echelon and conservative Muslims found him offensive to religious-based morality. In this chapter I argue that Choukri attacks the idea that religion (and god) is the source of human morality. His literary work galvanizes the creation of a personal morality derived from critical thinking, empathy, and a sense of justice and equality in human experience. I provide an analysis of three aspects of the atheist morality that permeate Choukri’s oeuvre, which I call pre-Islamic, non-Islamic, and anti-Islamic poetics, or literary devices that place the narrator before, outside, and in opposition to Islam.

  PublisherDOI

• Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn's Cowspiracy

  2023-10-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In this chapter, Natalie Khazaal analyzes the provocative yet humorous documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014–2015), which treats the animal agriculture industry and its negative consequences in terms of greenhouse gas production, species extinction, deforestation, polluted water supplies, weakened biodiversity, increased air pollution, Amazon rainforest destruction, and augmented waste pollution. Although these consequences make animal agriculture a leading cause of environmental destruction, the filmmakers discovered that most environmental organizations never address this issue. In the film, they try to understand the depths and reasons for this failure, inspired by the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” (SOURCE). This chapter examines the film’s artistic and scientific aspects and how they engage with SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life below Water), and SDG 15 (Life on Land).

  PublisherDOI

• Political Bias against Atheists: Talk Shows Targeting Arabic-Speaking Audiences

  Religions · 2023 · 20 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Social psychology

  Atheism has stirred up controversy in the Arabic-speaking world since the 2011 uprisings, when atheists there began appearing in public. What role does Arabic mass media play in the modern politics of minorities such as atheists, given the heated debates that it hosts on atheism? This question is important because perceptions of media frames influence the behavior of politicians and the electorate—and, as a result, laws that affect minority groups such as atheists. This article focuses on Lebanon, where eight of the nine television channels are affiliated with and funded by religious–political parties. It explores the existence of bias against atheists on televised Lebanese talk shows and news reports (2010–2022). Our findings reveal significant bias (69% overall and over 85% in speaker prominence bias), with channels that promote communal religious practice exhibiting the highest levels. Ultimately, our findings demonstrate that television, as the most influential Lebanese and Arabic mass medium, likely affects the public’s negative perceptions of Arabic-speaking atheists. Our findings reflect the decrease in objectivity in conflict-based media and such media’s poor understanding or intentional disregard for media’s crucial role in building a fair, democratic society.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Gender, affect and atheism in Arabic media

  UCL Press eBooks · 2022-12-08

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2021-06-08 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Like an Animal: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering

  2021 · 16 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Environmental ethics

  "In this volume, we suggest new perspectives with which critical animal studies (CAS) can contribute to the development of knowledge and praxis in two fields-dehumanization and critical border studies, both concerned with human migration, refuge, and territorial or other borders. CAS is an interdisciplinary field that reflects on the ethics of humans' relationships with other animals, how the oppression of nonhuman animals intersects with other forms of oppression, and how economic interests drive oppression. CAS scholars reject disinterested analysis to champion liberation for human animals, nonhuman animals, and the Earth."

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Núria Almirón

  Pompeu Fabra University

  3 shared

• Sami Abdallah

  University of Regensburg

  1 shared

• M. Itani

  1 shared

• Robert S. Hinck

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

  UCLA College of Letters and Science

  2007

Awards & honors

• 2019 Fellow of the ACLS/Luce Program in Religion, Journalism…
• 2020 Faces of Exclusive Excellence Award recipient, Georgia…
• 2021 Silver Star Award, Ivan Allen College, Georgia Tech
• 2022 Faculty Excellence Award for research, Ivan Allen Colle…
• 2022 Teaching Excellence Award, Georgia Tech