Moustafa Bayoumi
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195369212
- eISBN:
- 9780199871179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369212.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Islam
This chapter investigates what is like to be young, Muslim, and male in Brooklyn, New York. Muslim youth in the United States, particularly Arab American men, who have come of age after the terrorist ...
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This chapter investigates what is like to be young, Muslim, and male in Brooklyn, New York. Muslim youth in the United States, particularly Arab American men, who have come of age after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, make up a generation with distinct characteristics. Many of today’s young Muslim men see themselves as part of the Islamic revival and substantially more pious than their parents’ generation, which was largely made up of immigrants to the nation. Moreover, they often separate themselves spatially and socially from wider society, achieving a kind of group solidarity with other young Muslim males. From this group sensibility, they then reintegrate collectively into larger society, but often with the express purpose of propagating the faith.Less
This chapter investigates what is like to be young, Muslim, and male in Brooklyn, New York. Muslim youth in the United States, particularly Arab American men, who have come of age after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, make up a generation with distinct characteristics. Many of today’s young Muslim men see themselves as part of the Islamic revival and substantially more pious than their parents’ generation, which was largely made up of immigrants to the nation. Moreover, they often separate themselves spatially and socially from wider society, achieving a kind of group solidarity with other young Muslim males. From this group sensibility, they then reintegrate collectively into larger society, but often with the express purpose of propagating the faith.
Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199736317
- eISBN:
- 9780199866458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199736317.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Using beliefs and rumors that emerged during the first days after September 11, this chapter discusses how a culture in crisis uses these tools to make sense out of a disorienting event such as this. ...
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Using beliefs and rumors that emerged during the first days after September 11, this chapter discusses how a culture in crisis uses these tools to make sense out of a disorienting event such as this. Rumor is a truth claim not backed by authoritative information. Whether true or false, it is an expression of a community's collective beliefs. These are especially illustrated in rumors about religious miracles and signs that occurred in the attacks, about groups of Arab Americans who publicly celebrated the event, and about a terrorist who warned his girlfriend about the attack in advance. The chapter analyzes these in terms of the politics of plausibility (the sort of thing Americans are predisposed to believe) and of credibility (the sources that Americans normally trust for reliable information). To flourish in public discourse, a rumor should be both credible and plausible.Less
Using beliefs and rumors that emerged during the first days after September 11, this chapter discusses how a culture in crisis uses these tools to make sense out of a disorienting event such as this. Rumor is a truth claim not backed by authoritative information. Whether true or false, it is an expression of a community's collective beliefs. These are especially illustrated in rumors about religious miracles and signs that occurred in the attacks, about groups of Arab Americans who publicly celebrated the event, and about a terrorist who warned his girlfriend about the attack in advance. The chapter analyzes these in terms of the politics of plausibility (the sort of thing Americans are predisposed to believe) and of credibility (the sources that Americans normally trust for reliable information). To flourish in public discourse, a rumor should be both credible and plausible.
Barbara Sellers‐Young
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195386691
- eISBN:
- 9780199863600
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386691.003.0012
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Barbara Sellers‐Young details the life and career of Ibrahim Farrah, a Lebanese American who was one of the seminal figures in the performance, teaching, and popularizing of cabaret belly dance in ...
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Barbara Sellers‐Young details the life and career of Ibrahim Farrah, a Lebanese American who was one of the seminal figures in the performance, teaching, and popularizing of cabaret belly dance in the United States. As a male dancer in a genre widely regarded as performed exclusively by women, Farrah, through his performances and writings, embodied the tensions inherent in the cultural and gender issues surrounding belly dance in both the Arab American community, from which he first learned Oriental dance, and in wider American society after belly dance had become an important leisure activity for more than a million women in the 1980s. Many of those women followed the news and history of the genre in Farrah's groundbreaking journal, Arabesque.Less
Barbara Sellers‐Young details the life and career of Ibrahim Farrah, a Lebanese American who was one of the seminal figures in the performance, teaching, and popularizing of cabaret belly dance in the United States. As a male dancer in a genre widely regarded as performed exclusively by women, Farrah, through his performances and writings, embodied the tensions inherent in the cultural and gender issues surrounding belly dance in both the Arab American community, from which he first learned Oriental dance, and in wider American society after belly dance had become an important leisure activity for more than a million women in the 1980s. Many of those women followed the news and history of the genre in Farrah's groundbreaking journal, Arabesque.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This introductory chapter briefly explores how Arab-American writers and critics respond to negative representations of Arabs in the United States. They articulate a rising need among Arab-Americans ...
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This introductory chapter briefly explores how Arab-American writers and critics respond to negative representations of Arabs in the United States. They articulate a rising need among Arab-Americans for a transformative project of communal and individual self-representation, one that captures the complexity and heterogeneity of their communities. Such efforts, however, have hardly forced Arab-American literary output to conform to a didactic and proclamatory platform. Instead, they render it a valuable creative space for delineating shared and individual concerns regarding Arab-Americans' myriad positions and outlooks in the U.S., their connections to original Arab homelands, and their negotiation of the complexities of citizenship and belonging in the U.S. Drawing from the legal and cultural dimensions of citizenship, the chapter argues that there is very little room for negotiating cultural citizenship outside the discourse and practice of inclusion and assimilation, primarily by virtue of Arab-Americans' religious and political affiliations.Less
This introductory chapter briefly explores how Arab-American writers and critics respond to negative representations of Arabs in the United States. They articulate a rising need among Arab-Americans for a transformative project of communal and individual self-representation, one that captures the complexity and heterogeneity of their communities. Such efforts, however, have hardly forced Arab-American literary output to conform to a didactic and proclamatory platform. Instead, they render it a valuable creative space for delineating shared and individual concerns regarding Arab-Americans' myriad positions and outlooks in the U.S., their connections to original Arab homelands, and their negotiation of the complexities of citizenship and belonging in the U.S. Drawing from the legal and cultural dimensions of citizenship, the chapter argues that there is very little room for negotiating cultural citizenship outside the discourse and practice of inclusion and assimilation, primarily by virtue of Arab-Americans' religious and political affiliations.
Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199736317
- eISBN:
- 9780199866458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199736317.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Many rumors concerning the September 11 terrorist attacks claimed that the event was in fact caused by a plot secretly planned by a secret group of evil elites. This chapter proposes a methodology of ...
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Many rumors concerning the September 11 terrorist attacks claimed that the event was in fact caused by a plot secretly planned by a secret group of evil elites. This chapter proposes a methodology of understanding conspiracy theories as an integrated body of beliefs that make sense of a confusing event by connecting it with deeply ingrained cultural values. Conspiracy has the benefit of seeing order in a disorderly event, and giving people a plausible villain to blame. Initially, many Americans assumed that Arab Americans or Muslims were generally aware of the plot and complicit in it; later, more hardy beliefs held that Israelis or Zionists were actually responsible, or that the Bush administration had cynically orchestrated the attacks to shore up its own credibility at home. Increasingly, these conspiracy beliefs express profound distrust of governments and elite groups of intellectuals.Less
Many rumors concerning the September 11 terrorist attacks claimed that the event was in fact caused by a plot secretly planned by a secret group of evil elites. This chapter proposes a methodology of understanding conspiracy theories as an integrated body of beliefs that make sense of a confusing event by connecting it with deeply ingrained cultural values. Conspiracy has the benefit of seeing order in a disorderly event, and giving people a plausible villain to blame. Initially, many Americans assumed that Arab Americans or Muslims were generally aware of the plot and complicit in it; later, more hardy beliefs held that Israelis or Zionists were actually responsible, or that the Bush administration had cynically orchestrated the attacks to shore up its own credibility at home. Increasingly, these conspiracy beliefs express profound distrust of governments and elite groups of intellectuals.
Pamela E. Pennock
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469630984
- eISBN:
- 9781469631004
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469630984.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The chapter explains how Arab American activism became more connected to mainstream progressive political organizing. The Palestine Human Rights Campaign, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee ...
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The chapter explains how Arab American activism became more connected to mainstream progressive political organizing. The Palestine Human Rights Campaign, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and Arab American Institute (AAI) tried to collaborate with liberal religious and political organizations, especially moderate African Americans. The work of the ADC and AAI with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and his campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination signalled the inclusion of Arab Americans in mainstream civil rights coalitions.Less
The chapter explains how Arab American activism became more connected to mainstream progressive political organizing. The Palestine Human Rights Campaign, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and Arab American Institute (AAI) tried to collaborate with liberal religious and political organizations, especially moderate African Americans. The work of the ADC and AAI with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and his campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination signalled the inclusion of Arab Americans in mainstream civil rights coalitions.
Wail S. Hassan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199792061
- eISBN:
- 9780199919239
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199792061.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Arab immigrants began to arrive in the United States in the late-nineteenth century and in Britain after World War Two. Those immigrants have produced a vast literature that remains relatively ...
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Arab immigrants began to arrive in the United States in the late-nineteenth century and in Britain after World War Two. Those immigrants have produced a vast literature that remains relatively unknown outside of specialist circles. Like other ethnic literatures, Arab-American and Arab-British writing treats a variety of themes such as the immigrant experience, the lives of minorities, cultural misconceptions, and stereotypes. In addition to that, Arab immigrant writing also reveals unique perspectives on complex issues that continue to shape our world today, such as inter-faith relations, the tangled politics of the Middle East, the role played first by the British empire then by the United States in the region, the representations of Arabs and Arab culture in British and American societies, and the status of Muslim minorities there. Although those issues have acquired an unprecedented urgency in the post-9/11 period, they have preoccupied Arab-American and Arab-British writers since the early days of the twentieth century. While this book is not a comprehensive literary history, it offers a critical reading of that tradition from its inception to the present. Drawing upon postcolonial, translation, and minority discourse theory, Immigrant Narratives investigates how key novelists and autobiographers have described their immigrant experiences, and in so doing acted as mediators and interpreters between cultures, and how they have forged new identities in their adopted countries.Less
Arab immigrants began to arrive in the United States in the late-nineteenth century and in Britain after World War Two. Those immigrants have produced a vast literature that remains relatively unknown outside of specialist circles. Like other ethnic literatures, Arab-American and Arab-British writing treats a variety of themes such as the immigrant experience, the lives of minorities, cultural misconceptions, and stereotypes. In addition to that, Arab immigrant writing also reveals unique perspectives on complex issues that continue to shape our world today, such as inter-faith relations, the tangled politics of the Middle East, the role played first by the British empire then by the United States in the region, the representations of Arabs and Arab culture in British and American societies, and the status of Muslim minorities there. Although those issues have acquired an unprecedented urgency in the post-9/11 period, they have preoccupied Arab-American and Arab-British writers since the early days of the twentieth century. While this book is not a comprehensive literary history, it offers a critical reading of that tradition from its inception to the present. Drawing upon postcolonial, translation, and minority discourse theory, Immigrant Narratives investigates how key novelists and autobiographers have described their immigrant experiences, and in so doing acted as mediators and interpreters between cultures, and how they have forged new identities in their adopted countries.
Pamela E. Pennock
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469630984
- eISBN:
- 9781469631004
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469630984.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter describes the formation of the Arab American University Graduates shortly after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and how it became the most influential organization on the Arab American ...
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This chapter describes the formation of the Arab American University Graduates shortly after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and how it became the most influential organization on the Arab American Left. An organization of intellectuals, the AAUG was secular, pan-Arab, and it engaged in advocacy of Palestinian nationalism. It sought alliances with the Third World Left.Less
This chapter describes the formation of the Arab American University Graduates shortly after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and how it became the most influential organization on the Arab American Left. An organization of intellectuals, the AAUG was secular, pan-Arab, and it engaged in advocacy of Palestinian nationalism. It sought alliances with the Third World Left.
Jacob Rama Berman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814789506
- eISBN:
- 9780814789513
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814789506.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter focuses on the emergence of Arab American literary self-representation by moving through a historiography of Arab migration to America and toward an analysis of Ameen Rihani's literary ...
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This chapter focuses on the emergence of Arab American literary self-representation by moving through a historiography of Arab migration to America and toward an analysis of Ameen Rihani's literary and political writings. Positioned at the headwaters of an indigenous Arab intellectual reawakening (the nahdah) and a migrant Arab political consciousness (the mahjar), Rihani articulates a vision of Arab identity that embraces arabesque self-representation as a form of empowerment. Eventually, the literary strategies of self-representation that Rihani employs translate into the political strategies informing pan-Arabism. Indeed, Rihani's goal is the formation of a pan-Arab identity that self-consciously blends Orient and Occident, modern and traditional, Islamic and Christian, America and Arabia to create mahjar or migrant identity.Less
This chapter focuses on the emergence of Arab American literary self-representation by moving through a historiography of Arab migration to America and toward an analysis of Ameen Rihani's literary and political writings. Positioned at the headwaters of an indigenous Arab intellectual reawakening (the nahdah) and a migrant Arab political consciousness (the mahjar), Rihani articulates a vision of Arab identity that embraces arabesque self-representation as a form of empowerment. Eventually, the literary strategies of self-representation that Rihani employs translate into the political strategies informing pan-Arabism. Indeed, Rihani's goal is the formation of a pan-Arab identity that self-consciously blends Orient and Occident, modern and traditional, Islamic and Christian, America and Arabia to create mahjar or migrant identity.
Nora Rose Moosnick
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813136219
- eISBN:
- 9780813136851
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136219.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Arabs and Jews are thought to inhabit the Middle East or urban areas in the United States, not Kentucky or other out of the way locales. Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation ...
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Arabs and Jews are thought to inhabit the Middle East or urban areas in the United States, not Kentucky or other out of the way locales. Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity explores the untold accounts of ten Arab and Jewish women who managed in the past and currently their unique identities tending to both their religious/ethnic traditions and acculturating to Kentucky ways. In the details of women's stories, ties between Arabs and Jews not in the Middle East, but middle America, emerge. Common ground surfaces displaying Arab and Jewish women with similar tales of women openly and publicly serving their communities, of mother-daughter relations, of the agility necessitated to work, mother, and be an active community member, and of what it meant to be an Arab and Jewish mother nearly a century ago. Associations materialize in the women's tales, underscoring that lives evolve relationally between generations, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, aunts and nephews, grandmothers and granddaughters, and within and between communities. Narratives about immigrant groups becoming American traditionally spotlight one group at a time, and not in correspondence to other groups. Through the lens of women's lives, the relational links between Arabs and Jews, individuals and communities, and generations become apparent.Less
Arabs and Jews are thought to inhabit the Middle East or urban areas in the United States, not Kentucky or other out of the way locales. Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity explores the untold accounts of ten Arab and Jewish women who managed in the past and currently their unique identities tending to both their religious/ethnic traditions and acculturating to Kentucky ways. In the details of women's stories, ties between Arabs and Jews not in the Middle East, but middle America, emerge. Common ground surfaces displaying Arab and Jewish women with similar tales of women openly and publicly serving their communities, of mother-daughter relations, of the agility necessitated to work, mother, and be an active community member, and of what it meant to be an Arab and Jewish mother nearly a century ago. Associations materialize in the women's tales, underscoring that lives evolve relationally between generations, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, aunts and nephews, grandmothers and granddaughters, and within and between communities. Narratives about immigrant groups becoming American traditionally spotlight one group at a time, and not in correspondence to other groups. Through the lens of women's lives, the relational links between Arabs and Jews, individuals and communities, and generations become apparent.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter revolves around representations of Arab homelands as embodied and performed by immigrant parents or grandparents, with these memories subsequently internalized but also revised by ...
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This chapter revolves around representations of Arab homelands as embodied and performed by immigrant parents or grandparents, with these memories subsequently internalized but also revised by second- and third-generation Arab-Americans—those who came of age or were born in the second half of the twentieth century. These younger Arab-Americans, most of whom have never been to the Arab world, revise inherited understandings of and connections to that “furthest” and “deepest” point of origin, or the “old country.” Instead of replicating the older immigrant generations' nostalgic memories of Arab homelands, however, they destabilize nostalgia by moving depictions of original homelands beyond a celebratory focus on ethnic and cultural traditions to incorporate accounts of the harsh realities of war, dispossession, gender politics, and exile. The writers of this generation draw on transnational frameworks of knowledge production to imagine, exemplify, and enact in their work a revisionary approach to Arab-American citizenship and belonging.Less
This chapter revolves around representations of Arab homelands as embodied and performed by immigrant parents or grandparents, with these memories subsequently internalized but also revised by second- and third-generation Arab-Americans—those who came of age or were born in the second half of the twentieth century. These younger Arab-Americans, most of whom have never been to the Arab world, revise inherited understandings of and connections to that “furthest” and “deepest” point of origin, or the “old country.” Instead of replicating the older immigrant generations' nostalgic memories of Arab homelands, however, they destabilize nostalgia by moving depictions of original homelands beyond a celebratory focus on ethnic and cultural traditions to incorporate accounts of the harsh realities of war, dispossession, gender politics, and exile. The writers of this generation draw on transnational frameworks of knowledge production to imagine, exemplify, and enact in their work a revisionary approach to Arab-American citizenship and belonging.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter addresses a range of Arab-American literary and cultural texts that respond to the post-9/11 political and social terrain in the U.S. They capture and challenge homogenized depictions of ...
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This chapter addresses a range of Arab-American literary and cultural texts that respond to the post-9/11 political and social terrain in the U.S. They capture and challenge homogenized depictions of Arab-Americans, forging in the process what can be identified as revisionaryor counterhegemonic spaces that redefine exclusionary conceptualizations of U.S. citizenship and belonging. In addition to problematizing simplistic types of post-9/11 patriotism that demand a unilateral type of U.S. national identity, the creation of these revisionary spaces responds to racial stereotyping, blanket labeling, and discriminatory profiling by insisting on complex representations of Arab-Americans. The chapter describes how 9/11 and other crises that happened/are happening in the Arab homeland position the formation and development of Arab-American identities within well-cemented racialized structures that hold the political relations between the U.S. and the Arab world at their center—a relationship that is dominated by U.S. political and military hegemony.Less
This chapter addresses a range of Arab-American literary and cultural texts that respond to the post-9/11 political and social terrain in the U.S. They capture and challenge homogenized depictions of Arab-Americans, forging in the process what can be identified as revisionaryor counterhegemonic spaces that redefine exclusionary conceptualizations of U.S. citizenship and belonging. In addition to problematizing simplistic types of post-9/11 patriotism that demand a unilateral type of U.S. national identity, the creation of these revisionary spaces responds to racial stereotyping, blanket labeling, and discriminatory profiling by insisting on complex representations of Arab-Americans. The chapter describes how 9/11 and other crises that happened/are happening in the Arab homeland position the formation and development of Arab-American identities within well-cemented racialized structures that hold the political relations between the U.S. and the Arab world at their center—a relationship that is dominated by U.S. political and military hegemony.
Nora Rose Moosnick
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813136219
- eISBN:
- 9780813136851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136219.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Arabs and Jews are inevitably construed as opposing forces engaged in conflict of biblical and global proportions. Renderings of Arabs and Jews often overlook the many close and complicated ...
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Arabs and Jews are inevitably construed as opposing forces engaged in conflict of biblical and global proportions. Renderings of Arabs and Jews often overlook the many close and complicated relationships that they have forged today and historically. In this introductory chapter, the stage is set for the chapters that follow-narratives that confront superficial notions of Arabs and Jews-noting that the chapters in which the stories are told an Arab and a Jewish woman are paired around common themes. This introductory chapter ends by speaking to the context in which the stories were gathered including the documentarian's perspective focused on marginalization.Less
Arabs and Jews are inevitably construed as opposing forces engaged in conflict of biblical and global proportions. Renderings of Arabs and Jews often overlook the many close and complicated relationships that they have forged today and historically. In this introductory chapter, the stage is set for the chapters that follow-narratives that confront superficial notions of Arabs and Jews-noting that the chapters in which the stories are told an Arab and a Jewish woman are paired around common themes. This introductory chapter ends by speaking to the context in which the stories were gathered including the documentarian's perspective focused on marginalization.
Keith P. Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694501
- eISBN:
- 9781452950846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694501.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Chapter Four situates the emergence of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism within the growing knowledge production of a community of scholars of Arab descent. It illuminates a contrapuntal analytic ...
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Chapter Four situates the emergence of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism within the growing knowledge production of a community of scholars of Arab descent. It illuminates a contrapuntal analytic attentive to the incommensurable connections between U.S. settler conquest, the Holocaust, and the dispossession and dehumanization of Arab communities.Less
Chapter Four situates the emergence of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism within the growing knowledge production of a community of scholars of Arab descent. It illuminates a contrapuntal analytic attentive to the incommensurable connections between U.S. settler conquest, the Holocaust, and the dispossession and dehumanization of Arab communities.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter portrays second- and third generation Arab-Americans undertaking temporary return journeys to ancestral homelands. The revisionary perspectives resulting from such journeys, a concept ...
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This chapter portrays second- and third generation Arab-Americans undertaking temporary return journeys to ancestral homelands. The revisionary perspectives resulting from such journeys, a concept referred to as rearrivals, are exemplified in the works of writers Mohja Kahf, Samia Serageldin, Pauline Kaldas, and Muaddi Darraj. The chapter also features nonliterary pieces that focus on the significance of return journeys in the Palestinian context, such as Annemarie Jacir's film Salt of this Sea (2008) and Emily Jacir's visual art. These works are often instigated by a desire to return to the geographical and national roots of diasporic Arab identities, or to what is simply defined as the familiar, even if this familiarity is an inherited construct. Such desires are informed by the urge to gain a deeper self-knowledge and some reprieve from the ambiguities of belonging that plague Arab-Americans in the diaspora.Less
This chapter portrays second- and third generation Arab-Americans undertaking temporary return journeys to ancestral homelands. The revisionary perspectives resulting from such journeys, a concept referred to as rearrivals, are exemplified in the works of writers Mohja Kahf, Samia Serageldin, Pauline Kaldas, and Muaddi Darraj. The chapter also features nonliterary pieces that focus on the significance of return journeys in the Palestinian context, such as Annemarie Jacir's film Salt of this Sea (2008) and Emily Jacir's visual art. These works are often instigated by a desire to return to the geographical and national roots of diasporic Arab identities, or to what is simply defined as the familiar, even if this familiarity is an inherited construct. Such desires are informed by the urge to gain a deeper self-knowledge and some reprieve from the ambiguities of belonging that plague Arab-Americans in the diaspora.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter delves deeper into the thematic diversity of transnational articulations to investigate how Arab-American rootedness in and production of transnational identities produce specific ...
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This chapter delves deeper into the thematic diversity of transnational articulations to investigate how Arab-American rootedness in and production of transnational identities produce specific translocal spaces that alters peoples understanding of U.S. national, diasporic, and ethnic belonging. It analyzes the works of Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Haas Mroue, Rabih Alameddine, Etel Adnan, Edward Said, Laila Halaby, and Randa Jarrar. These writers' antinostalgic stances and critical perspectives, mostly but not solely reflecting a contemporary immigrant perspective, produce complicated constructs of homes and homelands that incorporate the stark effects of lingering war traumas and political tensions on current Arab-American identity formations. Specifically, the works examined highlight the need to ground a transnational framework in the specificity and uniqueness of particular place-based experiences that are primarily shaped within the Arab world and are then transported through immigration or exile into the multifarious U.S. landscape.Less
This chapter delves deeper into the thematic diversity of transnational articulations to investigate how Arab-American rootedness in and production of transnational identities produce specific translocal spaces that alters peoples understanding of U.S. national, diasporic, and ethnic belonging. It analyzes the works of Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Haas Mroue, Rabih Alameddine, Etel Adnan, Edward Said, Laila Halaby, and Randa Jarrar. These writers' antinostalgic stances and critical perspectives, mostly but not solely reflecting a contemporary immigrant perspective, produce complicated constructs of homes and homelands that incorporate the stark effects of lingering war traumas and political tensions on current Arab-American identity formations. Specifically, the works examined highlight the need to ground a transnational framework in the specificity and uniqueness of particular place-based experiences that are primarily shaped within the Arab world and are then transported through immigration or exile into the multifarious U.S. landscape.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This concluding chapter outlines new directions in the field, such as the circulation of Arab American texts and other medium within transnational and translocal circuits. The current expansion of ...
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This concluding chapter outlines new directions in the field, such as the circulation of Arab American texts and other medium within transnational and translocal circuits. The current expansion of the Arab-American literary and cultural scene includes an increase in the variety of genres being produced as well as in the number of intellectual, virtual, and physical spaces available for showcasing such work. Such efforts further help Americans in understanding how the transnational aspects of Arab-American literature and culture alter various spaces of knowledge about minoritized identities across different spaces and temporalities. The chapter also discusses the impact of the Arab uprising on Arab America. Within the Arab world, specifically in countries that experienced the Arab Spring, the will of the people to demand much-needed revolutionary reforms in government and political leadership have had a major effect on Arab diasporics' connections to their homelands.Less
This concluding chapter outlines new directions in the field, such as the circulation of Arab American texts and other medium within transnational and translocal circuits. The current expansion of the Arab-American literary and cultural scene includes an increase in the variety of genres being produced as well as in the number of intellectual, virtual, and physical spaces available for showcasing such work. Such efforts further help Americans in understanding how the transnational aspects of Arab-American literature and culture alter various spaces of knowledge about minoritized identities across different spaces and temporalities. The chapter also discusses the impact of the Arab uprising on Arab America. Within the Arab world, specifically in countries that experienced the Arab Spring, the will of the people to demand much-needed revolutionary reforms in government and political leadership have had a major effect on Arab diasporics' connections to their homelands.
Carol Fadda-Conrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479826926
- eISBN:
- 9781479819027
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479826926.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The last couple of decades have witnessed a flourishing of Arab-American literature across multiple genres. Yet, increased interest in this literature is ironically paralleled by a prevalent bias ...
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The last couple of decades have witnessed a flourishing of Arab-American literature across multiple genres. Yet, increased interest in this literature is ironically paralleled by a prevalent bias against Arabs and Muslims that portrays their long presence in the U.S. as a recent and unwelcome phenomenon. Spanning the 1990s to the present, this book takes in the sweep of literary and cultural texts by Arab-American writers in order to understand the ways in which their depictions of Arab homelands, whether actual or imagined, play a crucial role in shaping cultural articulations of U.S. citizenship and belonging. By asserting themselves within a U.S. framework while maintaining connections to their homelands, Arab-Americans contest the blanket representations of themselves as dictated by the U.S. nation-state. Deploying a multidisciplinary framework at the intersection of Middle-Eastern studies, U.S. ethnic studies, and diaspora studies, the book argues for a transnational discourse that overturns the often rigid affiliations embedded in ethnic labels. Tracing the shifts in transnational perspectives, from the founders of Arab-American literature, like Kahlil Gibran and Ameen Rihani, to modern writers such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Joseph Geha, Randa Jarrar, and Suhei Hammad, the book finds that contemporary Arab-American writers depict strong yet complex attachments to the U.S. landscape. It explores how the idea of home is negotiated between immigrant parents and subsequent generations, alongside analyses of texts that work toward fostering more nuanced understandings of Arab and Muslim identities in the wake of post-9/11 anti-Arab sentiments.Less
The last couple of decades have witnessed a flourishing of Arab-American literature across multiple genres. Yet, increased interest in this literature is ironically paralleled by a prevalent bias against Arabs and Muslims that portrays their long presence in the U.S. as a recent and unwelcome phenomenon. Spanning the 1990s to the present, this book takes in the sweep of literary and cultural texts by Arab-American writers in order to understand the ways in which their depictions of Arab homelands, whether actual or imagined, play a crucial role in shaping cultural articulations of U.S. citizenship and belonging. By asserting themselves within a U.S. framework while maintaining connections to their homelands, Arab-Americans contest the blanket representations of themselves as dictated by the U.S. nation-state. Deploying a multidisciplinary framework at the intersection of Middle-Eastern studies, U.S. ethnic studies, and diaspora studies, the book argues for a transnational discourse that overturns the often rigid affiliations embedded in ethnic labels. Tracing the shifts in transnational perspectives, from the founders of Arab-American literature, like Kahlil Gibran and Ameen Rihani, to modern writers such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Joseph Geha, Randa Jarrar, and Suhei Hammad, the book finds that contemporary Arab-American writers depict strong yet complex attachments to the U.S. landscape. It explores how the idea of home is negotiated between immigrant parents and subsequent generations, alongside analyses of texts that work toward fostering more nuanced understandings of Arab and Muslim identities in the wake of post-9/11 anti-Arab sentiments.
Pamela E. Pennock
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469630984
- eISBN:
- 9781469631004
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469630984.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In this first history of Arab American activism in the 1960s, Pamela Pennock brings to the forefront one of the most overlooked minority groups in the history of American social movements. Focusing ...
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In this first history of Arab American activism in the 1960s, Pamela Pennock brings to the forefront one of the most overlooked minority groups in the history of American social movements. Focusing on the ideas and strategies of key Arab American organizations and examining the emerging alliances between Arab American and other anti-imperialist and antiracist movements, Pennock sheds new light on the role of Arab Americans in the social change of the era. She details how their attempts to mobilize communities in support of Middle Eastern political or humanitarian causes were often met with suspicion by many Americans, including heavy surveillance by the Nixon administration. Cognizant that they would be unable to influence policy by traditional electoral means, Arab Americans, through slow coalition building over the course of decades of activism, brought their central policy concerns and causes into the mainstream of activist consciousness. With the support of new archival and interview evidence, Pennock situates the civil rights struggle of Arab Americans within the story of other political and social change of the 1960s and 1970s. By doing so, she takes a crucial step forward in the study of American social movements of that era.Less
In this first history of Arab American activism in the 1960s, Pamela Pennock brings to the forefront one of the most overlooked minority groups in the history of American social movements. Focusing on the ideas and strategies of key Arab American organizations and examining the emerging alliances between Arab American and other anti-imperialist and antiracist movements, Pennock sheds new light on the role of Arab Americans in the social change of the era. She details how their attempts to mobilize communities in support of Middle Eastern political or humanitarian causes were often met with suspicion by many Americans, including heavy surveillance by the Nixon administration. Cognizant that they would be unable to influence policy by traditional electoral means, Arab Americans, through slow coalition building over the course of decades of activism, brought their central policy concerns and causes into the mainstream of activist consciousness. With the support of new archival and interview evidence, Pennock situates the civil rights struggle of Arab Americans within the story of other political and social change of the 1960s and 1970s. By doing so, she takes a crucial step forward in the study of American social movements of that era.
Alex Lubin and Marwan M. Kraidy (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469628844
- eISBN:
- 9781469628868
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469628844.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
In American Studies, attention is shifting to American engagements with the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of war in Iraq and broad American economic influence. As protest against economic ...
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In American Studies, attention is shifting to American engagements with the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of war in Iraq and broad American economic influence. As protest against economic inequality, social discrimination, and political repression has risen around the world, recent Arab uprisings have attracted special focus. In this volume, Alex Lubin and Marwan Kraidy curate a new collection of essays that offer a reappraisal of the field of American Studies at the end of the “American Century.” The goal of this volume is not merely to continue the ongoing process of internationalizing American studies approaches by including non-U.S. scholars, but rather to explore how cultural forms circulate transnationally and are shaped by, and contribute to, international geopolitical contexts. With an introduction by the editors, these essays focus on the cultural politics of the U.S. engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and the geopolitics of American involvement with the uprisings of the Arab Spring, making a crucial intervention in the growing subfield of transnational American Studies. Featuring a diverse list of contributors from the United States, the Arab world, and beyond, America Studies Encounters the Middle East analyzes Arab-American relations by looking at the War on Terror, pop culture, and the influence of the American hegemony in a time of revolution.Less
In American Studies, attention is shifting to American engagements with the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of war in Iraq and broad American economic influence. As protest against economic inequality, social discrimination, and political repression has risen around the world, recent Arab uprisings have attracted special focus. In this volume, Alex Lubin and Marwan Kraidy curate a new collection of essays that offer a reappraisal of the field of American Studies at the end of the “American Century.” The goal of this volume is not merely to continue the ongoing process of internationalizing American studies approaches by including non-U.S. scholars, but rather to explore how cultural forms circulate transnationally and are shaped by, and contribute to, international geopolitical contexts. With an introduction by the editors, these essays focus on the cultural politics of the U.S. engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and the geopolitics of American involvement with the uprisings of the Arab Spring, making a crucial intervention in the growing subfield of transnational American Studies. Featuring a diverse list of contributors from the United States, the Arab world, and beyond, America Studies Encounters the Middle East analyzes Arab-American relations by looking at the War on Terror, pop culture, and the influence of the American hegemony in a time of revolution.
