The boundaries of Arab American studies have always been fluid. As a relatively young field of inquiry, researchers and scholars from a variety of backgrounds and approaches have been welcomed into the discipline. Sometimes the scholarship has included work on communities that may be outside the purview of a strictly defined Arab America. This panel features work that interrogates both terms in the label "Arab American." The authors on the panel ask questions such as, Should Arab American studies include research on Arabic-speaking communities that may not self-identify as Arab or Arab American? Should the field welcome work located in the Americas, but not necessarily in the United States? Should the field include scholarship that situates Arab Americans within broad coalitions such as MENA and AMEMSA? The four papers on this panel feature diverse approaches to the topic. Using a historical lens, one paper argues for geographic inclusion of Arabs across the Americas. Looking closely at a social movement of Arabs in Central and South America, the author shows how activists set out to forge cultural, diplomatic, and economic bonds between the Arab world and the Americas as well as to build a "pan-American" alliance among themselves across the hemisphere. Another paper takes a more contemporary ethnographic approach, embarking on a discursive analysis of three generations of Lebanese in the U.S., investigating the tensions in self-identification (such as Arab vs. Lebanese).
The remaining two papers center their investigations on aesthetic productions by Arabs, Arab Americans, Muslims, and Muslim Americans. One of the papers argues that by expansively considering the role Arab American writers and artists play in global literary communities, we can underscore connections between Arab American writers and diasporic communities transnationally as well as with diverse minority communities domestically. The authors of the final paper seek to broaden Arab American scholarly inquiry to reflect the role that critical South Asian diasporic voices have in speaking to issues of concern to the Arab American community. The authors accomplish this through an analysis of a recent film by a U.S.-educated British Pakistani writer. Collectively, the papers on this panel interrogate the boundaries of scholarship on Arab Americans, opening up new spaces of inclusivity across geographic, linguistic, religious, and ethnic lines.
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Mr. John Tofik Karam
This paper calls for a novel paradigm of area and ethnic studies by bridging transnational turns from the heretofore separate fields of, on the one hand, Middle East and Arab American studies, and on the other, Latin American and Latino studies. I focus on the Federação de Entidades Árabes das Americas (Federation of Arab Associations of the Americas,” abbreviated as FEARAB in Portuguese and Spanish), a social movement of Arab migrants and descendants in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and elsewhere, founded in Buenos Aires in 1973. This paper asks how FEARAB activists fostered ties with Southern Cone authoritarian regimes, pan-Arab states, and U.S. Arab civil rights groups. Under military rule in the Southern Cone, FEARAB activists set out to forge cultural, diplomatic, and economic bonds between the Arab world and these Americas as well as to build a “pan-American” alliance among themselves across this hemisphere, bringing them into contact with the “Association of Arab-American University Graduates” (AAUG), a social movement that began in Michigan in 1967. Their transnational mobilization reveals an Arab América across the hemisphere and beyond.
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Amanda Eads
“Who we are is inextricably linked to where we are, have been, or are going” (Barnes 2000). Accordingly, ethnocultural identity construction of Lebanese-Americans in North Carolina is a fluid process that changes over time, place, and ethnic orientation. This study examines the role of language maintenance and ethnic identity based on several complementary sources: a set of oral histories compiled for the documentary Cedars in the Pines, a questionnaire on socioethnic orientation and language use, and a series of sociolinguistic interviews related to language use. These sources are used to show discursively how three generations of Lebanese in the US construct identity in relation to their 'homeland' and their ‘host society'. I combine Goffman's notion of framing with Dixon's notions of geographical place and social space in a broad interactional sociolinguistic framework examining code-switching, deictic shift as a positioning device, and footing, demonstrating that all speakers’ frame their daily experiences through 'transcultural' lens. These frames reveal different forms of ethnocultural identification among the generations and the differing backgrounds. While G1 speakers claim a place-based Lebanese identity, G2 and G3 speakers construct it in terms of cultural- space. Between G2 and G3 speakers, G3 exhibits a stronger claim to Lebanese ethnocultural identity. The community shows a generational transition from Abdelhady’s notion of “diasporic” identity towards Giampapa’s notion of “hyphenated” identity, revealing how they link 'where they have been' and 'where they are' now.
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This paper proposes approaching questions of Arab American identity through the lens of literary and aesthetic production. Recent scholarship on Arab American writing debates the parameters of the designation “Arab American,” and I build on this work to examine the ideological implications of categorizing identity along linguistic (Arabic or English), religious, ethnic, and geographic markers. Scholars such as Wail Hassan, Nouri Gana, and Layla Maleh, chose to make wider connections between Arab American writers, Arab Anglophone writers from different national contexts, and writers in diaspora. This approach challenges us to think about the ways, for example, a writer such as Yasmeen Maxamuud, who writes about the Somali diaspora in Minnesota, is connected to Randa Jarrar, a Palestinian American author who, like Maxamuud, transforms Western literary forms to tell stories of diaspora. But what, then, does Jarrar have in common with Selma Dabbagh, a British Palestinian author who also writes about migration, globalization, and transnational identities? To what literary traditions do Maxamuud, Jarrar, and Dabbagh belong? I argue that Arab American writing both partakes in and transforms U.S. culture; at the same time I maintain that by expansively considering the role Arab American writers and artists play in global literary communities, we can underscore connections between Arab American writers and diasporic communities transnationally as well as with diverse minority communities domestically. Through analyzing works that demonstrate a shared literary heritage, both Arabic and Western, I contend that Arab American narratives can be used to theorize an Arab American identity that circulates globally. By situating Arab American literature within larger conversations about Arab American identity, I hope to present new perspectives on the place of Arab American literature in the U.S. national imaginary and in wider global debates on the politics of the nation state.
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Dr. Eid Mohamed
The emerging field of Arab American studies has forged a space to interrogate nationalist limitations in U.S. cultural citizenship. Scholars have examined the U.S. post-Orientalist and racialized discourses as critical sites of disenfranchisement that constantly question the Arab American image in the United States. The scholarship has emphasized an identity paradox that subjects Arab Americans to embattle an institutional assignment of persons from the MENA region to the White/Caucasian race and a post-9/11 citizen-terrorist anxiety that configures Arab Americans into a broader category of Middle Easterners, South Asians, and look-a-likes. In this context, there rises the necessity for scholars in the field to explore the transnational contours of diasporic consciousness that articulate a common postcolonial search for identification against the disruptive force of western hegemony. Towards that end, we propose to broaden the Arab American scholarly inquiry to reflect critical South Asian diasporic voices, and examine their role in enunciating issues of concern to the Arab American community. To do so, we intend to conduct content analysis of the film The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), an adaption of the novel bearing the same title by U.S. educated and British Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid (2007). With production support from the Doha Film Institute, the New York-based Indian filmmaker Mira Nair invites the British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed to personify the role of a Pakistani American’s negotiation for a diasporic identity in the post-9/11 context. Hence, the analysis presents a case study in support of energizing the field with relevant and intersectional narratives.
