Narratives of Arab Anglophone Women and the Articulation of a Major Discourse in a Minor Literature

“It is important to stress that a variety of positions with respect to feminism, nation, religion and identity are to be found in Anglophone Arab women’s writings. This being the case, it is doubtful whether, in discussing this literary production, much mileage is to be extracted from over emphasis of the notion of its being a conduit of ‘Third World subaltern women.’” (Nash 35) Building on Geoffrey Nash’s statement and reflecting on Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualization of minor literature and Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland(s), we will discuss in this paper how the writings of Arab Anglophone women are specific minor and borderland narratives within minor literature(s) through a tentative (re)localization of Arab women’s English literature into distinct and various categories. By referring to various bestselling English works produced by Arab British and Arab American women authors, our aim is to establish a new taxonomy that may fit the specificity of these works

Honor Killings and the Construction of Gender in Arab Societies

This Article discusses the regulation and adjudication of honor killings in the Arab world and traces the distributive and disciplinary impact of such regulation/adjudication on Arab men and Arab women\u27s sexuality. In the afterword, the Article outlines the transformative effect of Islamicization of culture in the Arab world in the past twenty years on the practice of honor and killings committed in its name

Meeting at Middle Ground: American Quaker Women’s Two Palestinian Encounters

In the late nineteenth century the Palestinian town of Ramallah began receiving American missionary women who embodied their middle-class ideology of womanhood and ventured to discourse on Arab women and culture. Their conviction of the American woman as the model for other “unfortunate” women prevented these missionaries from integrating in the Palestinian cultural context. Consequently, this americentric belief led them to construct overwhelmingly negative views of Palestinian women as oppressed, living in ignorance and degraded conditions, and of Arab culture as backward and inept. However, American women missionaries after World War I grew in their cultural and linguistic understanding of Arab culture. this change in perspective came as a result of numerous social and cultural developments in Palestine and the United States that prepared these women to establish an accommodative middle ground between them and the Palestinians, thus modifying their previous perceptions.1 among these developments were the increased secularization of the Quakers’ curriculum, more cultural and linguistic training of American teachers, the significance of Palestine as the “Holy land” in missionary imagination, and most importantly the emergence of the strategy of cooperation and devolution among the different Protestant missions in Syria and Palestine after World War I

Beyond Critical Communication: Noor\u27s Soap Opera

Noor has occupied the minds and the hearts of the Arab audiences. This Turkish soap opera has reached levels beyond ordinary success of a soap opera and gained wide ranges of popularity. The aim of this research is to examine traditional and modern roles that the main characters play within the episodes of Noor. Paying special attention to the roles of female actors within the episodes, the critique will also scrutinize how Noor presents the Western definitions of acceptable roles for women. It is hoped that the results will help to illustrate a wide-ranging dialogue about women and feminism in the Arab world

‘In love, she remains whole’: Heterosexual Love in Contemporary Arab American Poetry Written by Women

Since the advent of Arab American feminism in the 1990s, Arab American women writers have become prominent figures in the field of Arab American literature. At the same time, the victimization of Arab women and the stereotyping of Arab men have grown in the West. Given this mainstream perception of Arabs, this article aims at exploring the positioning of Arab American women towards Arab men, taking into account the feminist fight against sexism and racism. Analyzing the articulations of heterosexual love made by Arab American women in their poetry (including Mohja Kahf, Suheir Hammad and Pauline Kaldas), this article will examine the potential political use of poetry

Issues in Representing Immigrant Victims

Panelist Emira-Habiby Browne, executive director of the Arab American Family Support Center discussed the misunderstood community of Arab women adn the cultural barriers they experience when they come to America and particularly when they become victims of domestic violence. Panelist Margaret Retter, Executive Director of Din Legal Center Inc., discussed the cultural obstacles that stand in the way of Jewish women who are being abused and the obstacles they face in getting out of that situation. Panelist Julie Dinnerstein, staff Immigration Attorney at the Sanctuary for Families, gave a nuts-and-bolts discussion on remedies available to immigrant battered women. She discussed VAWA and the Battered Spouse Waiver. Panelist Stephen Jenkins, attorney at The Workplace Justice Project, spoke about the eligibility for welfare benefits for immigrants. Panelist Lyn Neugebauer, supervising attorney at the Safe Horizon Immigration Law Project, discussed when political asylum for an abused immigrant is a good choice

Issue Brief: Middle Eastern American and Women/Gender Issues

This brief focuses on the intersection of Arab Americans and women and gender issues. Today, nearly two thirds of Arab Americans affiliate as Christians while one third are Muslim, yet both groups share certain cultural customs that impact the lives of Arab women living in America. This brief discusses the factors that influence the process of American assimilation, specifically the conflict that Arab American women face in balancing their American identity with their Arab ancestries

The Lived Experiences of Immigrant Arab Muslim Women in the United States: Implications for Counselors and Other Helping Professionals

As the demographic landscape of the United States continues to change, counselors along with other helping professionals are going to be challenged to find ways to meet the varying personal, social, and academic needs of an increasingly multiracial, multi-religious, and multicultural population. This study was an attempt to document and explain through an ethnographic study the experiences of six immigrant Arab Muslim women, ranging in age from 21 to 35, living in the United States. Data were gathered in the participants\u27 natural setting, utilizing ethnographic interviews. The general research question was What are the lived experiences of immigrant Arab Muslim women in the United States? Secondary questions were: (a) How do Arab American Muslim women perceive themselves culturally? (b) How do Arab American Muslim women describe their specific cultural experiences? (c) What barriers, if any, do Arab American Muslim women experience in their daily lives? (d) What do Arab American Muslim women describe as their support system? And, (e) What are Arab American Muslim women\u27s viewpoints on seeking counseling? The findings reveal that the six immigrant Arab Muslim women participants have difficulty assimilating in a society that differs in values and beliefs from their culture of origin. From a multicultural and feminist point of view, I found that the experiences of the Muslim women can lead to a counseling curriculum that educates and informs in-coming counselors and encourages the seasoned mental health professionals to target their services toward this group. Support from friends and family or lack there of, played a major role in the women\u27s integration. By learning about the experiences in their day to day lives, what they need, how they feel and react to those experiences, counselors and other helping professionals are more informed and better equipped to recruit, retain, and assist Arab American Muslim women in counseling

Of Wife and the Domestic Servant in the Arab World

The author asserts to avoid common misunderstandings on the relevance of Sharia to modern women in the Arab World that a) Shari’s relevance to the lives of modern women in the Arab World has been largely confined to the area of family law, b) in the modern nation state Sharia has been codified, i.e., certain rules derived from Islamic jurisprudence on the family have been selected and passed as laws, each nation state having its own unique combination of such rules, c) the courts and the judges who adjudicate disputes on family law are either secular courts/judges, or judges trained in state-run judiciary institutions with specific instruction on the state-based modern understanding of what Sharia is and d) the code, rather than Quran, the prophetic traditions, or the school of Islamic jurisprudence, is the primary source of the law. The latter constitute secondary sources

This Bridge Called Imagination: On Reading the Arab Image Foundation and Its Collection

This essay examines the benefits and disadvantages of using imagination as a method of historical research in the archive. Employing Jean-Paul Sartre\u27s notion of “image-consciousness” in The Psychology of Imagination, imagination is defined and explored as a form of perception based upon temporal absence or suspension. This method is then discussed in relation to the exhibition “Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women” (2006), curated by the author with artist Isabelle Massu. The installation was assembled with the cooperation of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut and traveled from Marseille (2005-06) to San Francisco (2007). The author explores a central element in the exhibition—the mélange of terms and cultural forces operating within the Arab Image Foundation\u27s keyword system—in order to posit the presence of an archival imagination that carries the method of imaginative research into the construction of the archive itself. The Arab Image Foundation—an archive with its own peculiar cross-cultural history and digital future— is found to encourage its own particular form of engagement