Transformative Acts: Arab American Writing/Writing Arab America.

Abstract

This dissertation explores Arab American writing and the intersections from which it originates, chronicling the emergence of Arab American literature throughout the twentieth and into the twenty first century, and situating this writing within the context of issues – in particular, race, ethnicity, politics, war, transnationalism, and feminist critique -- that have shaped both Arab American literature and Arab American identity. The dissertation questions formulations that would codify Arab American culture and experience on the basis of a linear trajectory from Arab to American, explores some of the ways in which this literature challenges and transforms the boundaries of ethnicity, and interrogates the possibilities of agency that emerge in contemporary Arab American writing. At the same time, through a series of interpolated creative and personal texts, it engages in an exploration of the kinds of narratives and poetics that result from the interface between “Arab” and “American,” offering a self-reflexive perspective on what it means to write as an Arab American. Chapters include: 1) Mapping the Terrain: Cultural Contexts, Literary Texts; 2) In Search of an Arab American Literature: Personal Explorations, Critical Questions; 3) Arab Americans and the Meanings of Race; 4) The Politics of Memory; 5) Locations, Coalitions and Cultural Negotiations; 6) Representation and Resistance: Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose and the Critical Dimensions of Voice; 7) Transfigurations: Home-space in Arab American Women’s Fiction; 8) Speaking Beyond Translation: Narratives and Interventions; 9) Geographies of Light: Poems and Possibilities; 10) Arab American Literature Today: The Road Forward.