Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance

Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance PDF Author: Marta Bosch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
This dissertation provides an analysis of the representation of Arab American men in post-9/11 writings by Arab American women. This thesis contributes a new inquiry regarding Arab American literature in joining the subject of literature written by women and the study of Arab American masculinities. It delves into the construction (from both outsider and insider perspectives) of Arab American masculinities, at the same time as it expounds on the history of Arab (American) feminisms, placing Arab American women writers in a privileged space of contestation and critique in their fight against both sexism and racism. This dissertation wants to visibilize the nuanced depiction of Arab and Arab American men provided by Arab American women writers after 9/11, who have been informed by feminism since the 1990s. In their attempt to fight both sexism and racism, Arab American women provide ambivalent representations of Arab men that counter stereotypical discourses historically entrenched in the American psyche and also recurrent after 9/11. Furthermore, this thesis also intends to provide an analysis of fiction as a representation of reality, while also understanding literature as a potential conductor of change in cultural discourses. To do so, the dissertation is structured in four main parts which examine the context, reasons, and potential consequences of the specific portrayals of Arab American masculinities published by Arab American women after 9/11. The first chapter covers the historical vilification and racialization of Arab men in the United States, by taking on theories on biopolitics (Foucault), necropolitics (Mbembe, Puar), and monster-terrorist (Puar and Rai) in relation to the traumatic experience of September 11. The second deals with the discourses that aid in the social construction of Arab American identities and masculinities, with a special emphasis given to the theories of neopatriarchy (Sharabi), heterotopia (Foucault) and thirdspace (Soja, Bhaba). The construction of Arab American identities is also analyzed (David), as well as Arab American masculinities (Harpel). The third chapter examines the development and characteristics of Arab American feminisms (Hatem), as well as their influence to Arab American women writers. Finally, the fourth part takes on the theories from previous chapters and provides a literary analysis of the male characters in a group of selected novels published after 9/11. Those are: Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent (2003), Laila Halaby's West of the Jordan (2003), Alicia Erian's Towelhead (2005), Laila Halaby's Once in A Promised Land (2007), Frances Kirallah Noble's The New Belly Dancer of the Galaxy (2007), Susan Muaddi Darraj's The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly (2007), Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home (2008), and Alia Yunis's The Night Counter (2009).

Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance

Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance PDF Author: Marta Bosch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Get Book Here

Book Description
This dissertation provides an analysis of the representation of Arab American men in post-9/11 writings by Arab American women. This thesis contributes a new inquiry regarding Arab American literature in joining the subject of literature written by women and the study of Arab American masculinities. It delves into the construction (from both outsider and insider perspectives) of Arab American masculinities, at the same time as it expounds on the history of Arab (American) feminisms, placing Arab American women writers in a privileged space of contestation and critique in their fight against both sexism and racism. This dissertation wants to visibilize the nuanced depiction of Arab and Arab American men provided by Arab American women writers after 9/11, who have been informed by feminism since the 1990s. In their attempt to fight both sexism and racism, Arab American women provide ambivalent representations of Arab men that counter stereotypical discourses historically entrenched in the American psyche and also recurrent after 9/11. Furthermore, this thesis also intends to provide an analysis of fiction as a representation of reality, while also understanding literature as a potential conductor of change in cultural discourses. To do so, the dissertation is structured in four main parts which examine the context, reasons, and potential consequences of the specific portrayals of Arab American masculinities published by Arab American women after 9/11. The first chapter covers the historical vilification and racialization of Arab men in the United States, by taking on theories on biopolitics (Foucault), necropolitics (Mbembe, Puar), and monster-terrorist (Puar and Rai) in relation to the traumatic experience of September 11. The second deals with the discourses that aid in the social construction of Arab American identities and masculinities, with a special emphasis given to the theories of neopatriarchy (Sharabi), heterotopia (Foucault) and thirdspace (Soja, Bhaba). The construction of Arab American identities is also analyzed (David), as well as Arab American masculinities (Harpel). The third chapter examines the development and characteristics of Arab American feminisms (Hatem), as well as their influence to Arab American women writers. Finally, the fourth part takes on the theories from previous chapters and provides a literary analysis of the male characters in a group of selected novels published after 9/11. Those are: Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent (2003), Laila Halaby's West of the Jordan (2003), Alicia Erian's Towelhead (2005), Laila Halaby's Once in A Promised Land (2007), Frances Kirallah Noble's The New Belly Dancer of the Galaxy (2007), Susan Muaddi Darraj's The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly (2007), Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home (2008), and Alia Yunis's The Night Counter (2009).

Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers

Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers PDF Author: Marta Bosch-Vilarrubias
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781453915745
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Post-9/11 Representations of Arab Men by Arab American Women Writers: Affirmation and Resistance examines the portrayals of Arab masculinities in novels published after September 11, 2001, by women of Arab descent in the United States. The book provides a historical account of the mainstream representations of Arab masculinities in the United States, using them as a contrast to the realities experienced by Arab men in the American diaspora. Considering the construction of male and female Arab American identities, this book illustrates the role of feminism in Arab American literature written by women and its influence on women's depictions of Arab men. Through an analysis of representative works by Diana Abu-Jaber, Laila Halaby, and Randa Jarrar, among others, this volume demonstrates how Arab American women's anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles inform their nuanced portrayals of Arab men. This book will be essential for professors and students of ethnic American literatures in general and Arab American studies in particular, as well as for those interested in women's studies and masculinity studies.

Arabs and Muslims in the Media

Arabs and Muslims in the Media PDF Author: Evelyn Alsultany
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814707319
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.

Arab American Women

Arab American Women PDF Author: Michael W. Suleiman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815655134
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
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.

Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities and Border Crossings

Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities and Border Crossings PDF Author:
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1621969576
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description


Arab and Arab American Feminisms

Arab and Arab American Feminisms PDF Author: Rabab Abdulhadi
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815651236
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles among Arab communities. Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street; and among each other. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibilities for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.

Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance

Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance PDF Author: Somaya Sami Sabry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857731629
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The public image of Arabs in America has been radically affected by the 'war on terror'. But stereotypes of Arabs, manifested for instance in Orientalist representations of Sheherazade and the Arabian Nights in Hollywood, have prevailed for much longer. Here Somaya Sabry argues that the Arab-American experience has been powerfully shaped by racial discourse and Orientalism, and is further complicated today by hostility towards Arabs in post-9/11 America. She shows how Arab-American women writers and performers confront and subvert racial stereotypes in this charged context by recasting representations of Sheherazade. Shedding new light on Arab-American women's negotiations of identity, this book will be indispensable for all those interested in the Arab-American world, American ethnic studies and race, as well as diaspora studies, women's studies, literature, cultural studies and performance studies.

Masculinities and Literary Studies

Masculinities and Literary Studies PDF Author: Josep M. Armengol
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351862952
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
If much of the existing masculinity scholarship has traditionally been grounded in a specific discipline, this project provides an innovative methodological approach to the subject of literary masculinities by proving the applicability of interdisciplinary masculinity scholarship –namely, sociology, social work, psychology, economics, political science, ecology, etc.– to the literary analysis, bridging the traditional gap between the Social Sciences and the Humanities in radically new and profound ways.

Men in Color

Men in Color PDF Author: Josep M. Armengol
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443827517
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Comprising seven different chapters, the collection Men in Color attempts to analyze, and revisit, the representation of ethnic masculinities, both white and non-white, in and through contemporary U.S. literature and cinema. If most of the existing studies on masculinity and race have centered on one specific model of racialized masculinities, Men in Color attempts to provide an introductory perspective on different racialized masculinities simultaneously, including African American, Asian American, Chicano, Arab American, and also white masculinity, which is analyzed as another ethnic and gendered construct, rather than as a paradigm of normalcy and “universality.” By exploring several ethnic masculinities in relation to each other, the present volume aims to highlight both the differences and the similarities between different patterns of masculinity, showing how, even as gender is inflected by race, certain aspects or features of masculinity remain unchanged across the ethnic board. Ultimately, the volume as a whole illustrates both the changing nature of masculinities as well as the recurrence of certain stereotypes, such as the hypersexualization and/or the feminization of ethnic males, which recur in and across several ethnicities. The constant tension and intersection between gender and race is the subject of this book, which hopes to contribute some notes and reflections on ethnic masculinities to the much more complex and larger discussion about gender and racial identities in our increasingly multicultural and globalized 21st-century world.

Migratory Men

Migratory Men PDF Author: Garth Stahl
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000888711
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Foregrounding the ways in which men experience transnational migration, Migratory Men: Place, Transnationalism and Masculinities considers how we conceptualise and theorise mobile men in a global context. Bringing together studies from around the world (e.g. Australia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Zimbabwe and Italy), this collection foregrounds how the transnational migratory experience profoundly reshapes men’s complex identity practices. Specifically, the collection highlights how transnational migratory aspirations and experiences often lead men to reimagine local patterns of masculinity and/or reaffirm prescriptive gender roles as they encounter new spaces/places. In presenting interdisciplinary research, the international scholars consider the powerful roles of economics, politics and social class in shaping masculinities. Furthermore, the contributors emphasise how men affectively and agentically experience migration and how interaction with new spaces/places can often lead to negotiations between disempowerment and empowerment. As such, this collection will appeal to both non-academic readers who share transnational migratory aspirations and experiences and academic readers across the social sciences with interests in gender and sexuality, migration and diaspora, transnationalism and contemporary masculinities. Chapters 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.