Arab American Heritage Month

Metropolitan Detroit is home to one of the largest, most diverse Arab communities outside the Middle East, yet the complex world Arabic-speaking immigrants have created there is barely visible on the landscape of ethnic America. In this volume, Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock bring together the work of twenty-five contributors to create a richly detailed portrait of Arab Detroit. The book goes behind the bulletproof glass in Iraqi Chaldean liquor stores. It explores the role of women in a Sunni mosque and the place of nationalist politics in a Coptic church. It follows the careers of wedding singers, Arabic calligraphers,restaurant owners, and pastry chefs. It examines the agendas of Shia Muslim activists and Washington-based lobbyists and looks at the intimate politics of marriage, family honor, and adolescent rebellion. Memoirs and poems by Lebanese, Chaldean, Yemeni, and Palestinian writers anchor the book in personal experience, while over fifty photographs provide a backdrop of vivid, often unexpected, images. In their efforts to represent an ethnic/immigrant community that is flourishing on the margins of pluralist discourse, the contributors to this book break new ground in the study of identity politics, transnationalism, and diaspora cultures.

A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is--decades after its first publication--one of the most important books written about our divided world.  "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." --The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.

"In this landmark work, for which he has written a new Introduction, one of our foremost public thinkers examines to origins and repercussions of the media's monolithic images of Islam. Combining political commentary with literary criticism, Edward Said reveals the hidden assumptions and distortions of fact that underlie even the most "objective" coverage of the Islamic world. In so doing, Covering Islam continues Said's lifelong investigation of the ways in which language not only describes but also defines political reality."--Jacket.

A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. "Grandly conceived . . . urgently written and urgently needed. . . . No one studying the relations between the metropolitan West and the decolonizing world can ignore Mr. Said's work.' --The New York Times Book Review In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition, Culture and Imperialism reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.

A unique study in American immigra-tion and assimilation history that also provides a special view of one of the smaller ethnic groups in American society. Naff focuses on the pre-World War I pio-neering generation of Arabic-speaking immigrants, the generation that set the patterns for settlement and assimilation. Unlike many immigrants who were drawn to the United States by dreams of industrial jobs or to escape religious or economic persecution, most of these ar-tisans and owners of small, disconnected plots of land came to America to engage in the enterprise of peddling. Most planned to stay two or three years and re-turn to their homelands.

Arab Americans are one of the most misunderstood segments of the U.S. population, especially after the events of 9/11. In Arab America, Nadine Naber tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States, and explores the apparently intra-communal cultural concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality as the battleground on which Arab American young adults and the looming world of America all wrangle. As this struggle continues, these young adults reject Orientalist thought, producing counter-narratives that open up new possibilities for transcending the limitations of Orientalist, imperialist, and conventional nationalist articulations of self, possibilities that ground concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality in some of the most urgent issues of our times: immigration politics, racial justice struggles, and U.S. militarism and war.

Bringing the rich terrain of Arab American histories to bear on conceptualizations of race in the U.S., this groundbreaking volume fills a critical gap in the field of ethnic studies. Unlike most immigrant communities who either have been consistently marked as ""non-white,"" or have made a transition from ""non-white"" to ""white,"" Arab Americans historically have been rendered ""white"" and have increasingly come to be seen as ""non-white."" This book highlights emergent discourses on the distinct ways that race matters to the study of Arab American histories and asks essential questions. What is the relationship between U.S. imperialism in Arab homelands and anti-Arab racism in the lives of Arab Americans? What are the relationships between religion, class, gender, and anti-Arab racism? What is the significance of whiteness studies to Arab American studies? Transcending multiculturalist discourses after September 11 that have simply ""added on"" the category ""Arab American"" to the landscape of U.S. ethnic and racial studies, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than a beginning, in the history of Arab American engagements with race, multiculturalism, and Americanization.

Some scholars believe that the influence of Islam in the United States can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson. Today, Islam and American Muslim populations are growing in importance in this country, and demand for information about them is high, especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. This A-to-Z encyclopedia will help students and other readers get a fast grip on pertinent holidays, terms, beliefs, practices, notables, and sects of the Islamic faith and Muslim practitioners in the United States. The accompanying primary documents volume provides 93 crucial articles, speeches, essays, poems, songs, and more to flesh out the encyclopedia entries. This encyclopedia and primary documents set, the first on the topic and for the general reader, is a must-have for every library. The primary focus is contemporary but the entries are historically contextualized, so the fuller picture of origins outside the country and practice now in the United States is clear. Further reading suggestions accompany each entry. The primary documents volume enhances the encyclopedic entries with annotated selections such as an article from an entry on a leading Muslim American magazine or an essay by a Muslim American scholar to illuminate an entry on her. This will be a boon for students doing reports on Islam and for non-Muslims looking to learn about Muslims in an objective, broad way. It is clearly and authoritatively written and compiled by a host of scholars, primarily from Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. An introduction, chronology, selected bibliography, set index, and photos round out the set. Sample entries: African Americans; Bush, George W.; Calendar; Dietary Rules; Dress; Gulf War; Hate Crimes; Iranian Hostage Crisis; Media Coverage; The Message International Magazine; Mosques; Music; Muslim Students Association; Nation of Islam; Native Americans; New York City; Poetry; Prisons; Shi'a Communities; Sufism; World Trade Center; Young Professionals. Sample documents: Salah Al-Sawy, The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America Fatwa Against the Danish Media and Government over the Cartoon Crisis, from The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America; Michael Wolfe, Michael Wolfe, United States, 1990, from One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage; Waris and Wajid Syed, Top 10 Muslim Hip-Hop Lyrics, from Warbux Records, beliefnet.com

Shakir tells the long neglected story of the bint arab--the Arab woman--in the United States. Drawing on primary sources such as club minutes, census records, and dozens of interviews, she explores the experience of late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrants--mostly Christian peasants from Lebanon and Syria--and their American-born daughters. Later, she moves on to the well-assimilated granddaughters (many of whom have reidentified with the Arab community and begun to fight its political battles). The work concludes with those women--most of them Muslim--who have emigrated over the last quarter century from many Arab countries, particularly Palestinians. While attempting to correct stereotypes that picture Arab women as passive, mindless, and downtrodden, Shakir gives voice to women caught in a tug of war, usually waged within the family, between traditional values and the social and sexual liberties permitted women in the West. Complicating that battle has been the American suspicion of Arab peoples, which has sometimes pushed women--as guardians of a culture under attack--to resist the blandishments of American society. However, the sense of embattlement has sometimes had the opposite outcome, legitimizing women's activities in the public and political realm. Leavened with personal reminiscences by the author, this book introduces a gallery of spirited women, speaking candidly about their differing backgrounds, values, and aspirations. Essential for all scholars and students of America's social and religious diversity.

Arab American women have played an essential role in shaping their homes, their communities, and their country for centuries. Their contributions, often marginalized academically and culturally, are receiving long- overdue attention with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Arab American women's studies. The collected essays in this volume capture the history and significance of Arab American women, addressing issues of migration, transformation, and reformation as these women invented occupations, politics, philosophies, scholarship, literature, arts, and, ultimately, themselves. Arab American women brought culture and absorbed culture; they brought relationships and created relationships; they brought skills and talents and developed skills and talents. They resisted inequities, refused compliance, and challenged representation. They engaged in politics, civil society, the arts, education, the market, and business. And they told their own stories. These histories, these genealogies, these narrations that are so much a part of the American experiment are chronicled in this volume, providing an indispensable resource for scholars and activists.

This volume focuses on the literature and culture of Arabs living in the United States who have gained new prominence after 9/11. For a proper assessment of their situation it seeks to provide basic information on the history and transculturation of immigrants from different parts of the Arab world. The contributions, which result from a teacher training conference, present survey articles on Arab American literature, politics and immigration laws, a case study of the transnational network of Arab families, discussions of Arab American fiction, film, theatre and poetry. The articles also address issues of teaching new forms of this literature and culture in the EFL classroom. Photographs of American mosques document the distribution of Islamic centers of worship and their integration into the urban landscape across the United States.

Read examines the labor force activity of Arab-American women, a group whose work experiences provide an exception to accepted theories. The employment rates of Arab immigrant women rank among the lowest of any immigrant group, while the rates of native-born Arab-American women resemble those of U.S.-born white women. These differences cannot be explained by Arab-American womens human capital characteristics or family resources, but are due to traditional cultural norms that prioritize womens family obligations over their economic activity and to ethnic and religious social networks that encourage the maintenance of traditional gender roles. Reads findings challenge assumptions about variations in ethnic womens labor force participation. Arab cultural values play an important role in determining the position of women of Arab descent in American society.

The eagerly awaited second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians will be published in November 2000 in print and online. With the inspiration of new discoveries and the emergence of modern research, the scope and depth of The New Grove II has broadened beyond all previous boundaries.Consistent with the Grove tradition for reliable and authoritative scholarship, The New Grove II Online will set the standard for online publishing. The distinguished and renowned editorial quality of The New Grove becomes still more powerful when coupled with the dynamic nature of the Internet.

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the profound and complex changes shaping the 21st century. With trans-regional contributions from established and emerging scholars, this ground-breaking volume offers conceptual essays and in-depth chapters that present rich analyses grounded in historical and geopolitical contexts, as well as key theory and empirical research. Rather than viewing the Middle East as a monolithic culture, this Handbook examines the diverse and multi-local characteristics of the region's knowledge production, dynamic media, and rich cultures. It addresses a wide range of topics, including the evolving mainstream and alternative media, competing histories in the region, and pressing socio-economic and media debates. Additionally, the Handbook explores the impact of regional and international politics on Middle Eastern cultures and media. Designed to serve as a foundation for the next era of research in the field, The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East is essential reading for all academics, scholars, and media practitioners. Its comprehensive scope makes it an excellent primary or supplementary textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in global studies, media and communication, journalism, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, and history.

Far from offering another study that bemoans Arab women's repression and veiling, Anxiety of Erasure looks at Arab women writers living in the diaspora who have translated their experiences into a productive and creative force. In this book, Al-Samman articulates the therapeutic effects of revisiting forgotten histories and of activating two cultural tropes: that of the maw'udah (buried female infant) and that of Shahrazad in the process of revolutionary change. She asks what it means to develop a national, gendered consciousness from diasporic locals while staying committed to the homeland. Al-Samman presents close readings of the fiction of six prominent authors whose works span over half a century and define the current status of Arab diaspora studies--Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamida al-Na'na', Hoda Barakat, Samar Yazbek, and Salwa al-Neimi. Exploring the journeys in time and space undertaken by these women, Anxiety of Erasure shines a light on the ways in which writers remain participants in their homelands' intellectual lives, asserting both the traumatic and the triumphant aspects of diaspora. The result is a nuanced Arab women's poetic that celebrates rootlessness and rootedness, autonomy and belonging.

"The age of transnational humanities has arrived." According to Steven Salaita, the seemingly disparate fields of Palestinian Studses and American Indian studies have more in common than one may think. In Inter/Nationalism, Salaita argues that American Indian and Indigenous studies must be more central to the scholarship and activism focusing on Palestine.  Salaita offers a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement--which, among other things, aims to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. In doing so, he emphasizes BDS's significant potential as an organizing entity as well as its importance in the creation of intellectual and political communities that put Natives and other colonized peoples such as Palestinians into conversation. His discussion includes readings of a wide range of Native poetry that invokes Palestine as a theme or symbol; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jackson and early Zionist thinker Ze'ev Jabotinsky; and the discourses of "shared values" between the United States and Israel.  Inter/Nationalism seeks to lay conceptual ground between American Indian and Indigenous studies and Palestinian studies through concepts of settler colonialism, indigeneity, and state violence. By establishing Palestine as an indigenous nation under colonial occupation, this book draws crucial connections between the scholarship and activism of Indigenous America and Palestine.

How might art disrupt Arabophobia and Islamophobia in the US? In Poetics of Visibility in the Contemporary Arab American Novel, Mazen Naous argues that fiction is one of the ways in which Arab Americans can correct dominant narratives of themselves with representation of their lived realities. Looking at both the aesthetics and politics in contemporary Arab American novels, Naous demonstrates that the novels' poetics cannot be extricated from or subsumed under political content. In his finely textured analyses of form and style, Naous uncovers crucial transcultural and transpoetic solidarities that extend beyond the politics of representation.   Naous's book offers analyses of Diana Abu-Jaber's Arabian Jazz and Crescent, Rabih Alameddine's Koolaids: The Art of War, Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land, and Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf as ways to answer this question. Naous explores how these novels negotiate queer desire, music, Western and Middle Eastern art, gender, and relationships between other minorities. These poetics enable readers to see the nuance and richness of Arab American experience. Naous ultimately argues that fiction creates crucial spaces for reimagining and redefining intercultural relationships.