Citizenship Excess

“Drawing on the Athenian tradition of ‘wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently defined polis,’ Hector Amaya has crafted an elegant and sophisticated analysis of the contemporary policies designed to contain and criminalize Latina/os. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that he is one of the leading Latina/o Media Scholars today.” —Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies and author of Latina/os Drawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American critical scholarship on the “coloniality of power,” Amaya demonstrates that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics, culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked by the ethno-racial and linguistic difference that nativists love to hate. Yet these social characteristics present crucial challenges to the political, legal, and cultural practices that define citizenship. Amaya examines the role of ethnicity and language in shaping the mediated public sphere through cases ranging from the participation of Latino/as in the Iraqi war and pro-immigration reform marches to labor laws restricting Latino/a participation in English-language media and news coverage of undocumented immigrant detention centers. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that the evolution of the idea of citizenship in the United States and the political and cultural practices that define it are intricately intertwined with nativism

Broken lines of Il/Legality and the reproduction of state sovereignty: the impact of visa policies on immigrants to Turkey from Bulgaria

After the granting of citizenship to the 300,000 Turkish migrants from Bulgaria in 1989, the Turkish state has proceeded to enact a series of visa regime changes concerning more recent migrants from Bulgaria, who, according to the most recent modification, are only allowed to stay for ninety days within any six month period. This paper argues that the arbitrariness sustained by Turkish immigration policies partakes, on the one hand, in more global trends to increase the vulnerability of the dispensable workforce required by neoliberal market economies and, on the other hand, the arbitrariness enhances the political power of the state within and outside of its borders. The temporary legalization of Bulgarian Turkish migrants in return for voting in the Bulgarian elections reveals that the state consolidates its transnational political power by drawing and redrawing the broken lines of legality/ illegality. Moreover we demonstrate not only the ways in which the migrant population from Bulgaria is managed but also the strategies deployed by the migrants themselves in the face of such sovereign acts

Service and Citizenship: Examining the Historical Relationship between Immigration and Military Service in the United States

The purpose of this project is to examine the many different groups of people who used military service in order to gain the political and civil rights of citizenship. I begin with a history of immigration and military service, throughout American history. I particularly concentrate on World War II, a pivotal moment for immigration and the military. I will then cover the historiography that informed my research. I include some research on immigrants who used military service to become naturalized citizens, such as those from Ireland, Germany, and the Philippines. I also include those who were born on American soil, such as African Americans and Native Americans, who hoped to gain civil rights through military service. Immigration legislation affects all those who immigrate to the United States. Therefore, I include these laws and how they affected those who wished to become citizens and how xenophobic attitudes influenced these regulations. I then explain the research process that went into my capstone project, which was the creation of teachers’ guides for the Kennesaw State University’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education. I focus on two groups in particular, The Ritchie Boys and Nisei in the Military Intelligence Service. The first are a group of European Jews who joined the military in World War II to become linguists for the Military Intelligence Service in the European Theater. The second group is a group of Japanese Americans who served in the Pacific Theater for the Military Intelligence Service as linguists. Finally, I discuss the importance of the study of military service in obtaining American citizenship and what it means today

The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies

In The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies, leading American Studies scholar John Carlos Rowe responds to two urgent questions for intellectuals. First, how did neoliberal ideology use the issues of feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, transnationalism and globalization, class mobility, religious freedom, and freedom of speech and cultural expression to justify a new -American Exceptionalism,- designed to support U.S. economic, political, military, and cultural expansion around the world in the past two decades? Second, if neoliberalism has employed successfully various cultural media, then what are the best means of criticizing its main claims and fundamental purposes? Is it possible under these circumstances to imagine a -counter-culture,- which might effectively challenge neoliberalism or is such an alternative already controlled and contained by such labels as -political correctness,- -the far left,- -radicalism,- -extremism,- even -terrorism,- which in the popular imagination refer to political and social minorities, doomed thereby to marginalization? Rowe argues that the tradition of -cultural criticism- advocated by influential public intellectuals, like Edward Said, can be adapted to the new circumstances demanded by the hegemony of neoliberalism and its successful command of new media. Yet rather than simply honoring such important predecessors as Said, we need to reconceive the role of the public intellectual as more than just an -interdisciplinary scholar- but also as a social critic able to negotiate the different media

If I Ruled the World: Putting Hip Hop on the Atlas

“If I Ruled the World: Putting Hip Hop on the Atlas” contends for a third wave of Global Hip Hop Studies that builds on the work of the first two waves, identifies Hip Hop as an African diasporic phenomenon, and aligns with Hip Hop where there are no boundaries between Hip Hop inside and outside of the United States. Joanna Daguirane Da Sylva adds to the cipha with her examination of Didier Awadi. Da Sylva\u27s excellent work reveals the ways in which Hip Hoppa Didier Awadi elevates Pan-Africanism and uses Hip Hop as a tool to decolonize the minds of African peoples. The interview by Tasha Iglesias and myself of members of Generation Hip Hop and the Universal Hip Hop Museum provides a primary source and highlights two Hip Hop organizations with chapters around the world. Mich Yonah Nyawalo’s Negotiating French Muslim Identities through Hip Hop details Hip Hop artists Médine and Diam’s, who are both French and Muslim, and whose self-identification can be understood as political strategies in response to the French Republic’s marginalization of Muslims. In “Configurations of Space and Identity in Hip Hop: Performing ’Global South’,” Igor Johannsen adds to this special issue an examination of the spatiality of the Global South and how Hip Hoppas in the Global South oppose global hegemony. The final essay, “‘I Got the Mics On, My People Speak’: On the Rise of Aboriginal Australian Hip Hop,” by Benjamin Kelly and Rhyan Clapham, provides a thorough analysis of Aboriginal Hip Hop and situates it within postcolonialism. Overall, the collection of these essays points to the multiple identities, political economies, cultures, and scholarly fields and disciplines that Hip Hop interacts with around the world

The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies

In The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies, leading American Studies scholar John Carlos Rowe responds to two urgent questions for intellectuals. First, how did neoliberal ideology use the issues of feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, transnationalism and globalization, class mobility, religious freedom, and freedom of speech and cultural expression to justify a new -American Exceptionalism,- designed to support U.S. economic, political, military, and cultural expansion around the world in the past two decades? Second, if neoliberalism has employed successfully various cultural media, then what are the best means of criticizing its main claims and fundamental purposes? Is it possible under these circumstances to imagine a -counter-culture,- which might effectively challenge neoliberalism or is such an alternative already controlled and contained by such labels as -political correctness,- -the far left,- -radicalism,- -extremism,- even -terrorism,- which in the popular imagination refer to political and social minorities, doomed thereby to marginalization? Rowe argues that the tradition of -cultural criticism- advocated by influential public intellectuals, like Edward Said, can be adapted to the new circumstances demanded by the hegemony of neoliberalism and its successful command of new media. Yet rather than simply honoring such important predecessors as Said, we need to reconceive the role of the public intellectual as more than just an -interdisciplinary scholar- but also as a social critic able to negotiate the different media

Syrian and Lebanese Identity in the American South

For Americans of Arab descent, identity can present a number of difficulties to define within the existing ethnic and racial categories of the United States. While several scholars have looked at the ways that Muslims American of Arab descent navigate these categories, less attention has been paid to the complex self-identification Christian Arab Americans, many of whom come from Lebanese and Syrian backgrounds. It is the objective of this thesis to explore how Americans of Syrian and Lebanese descent understand their ethnic, racial, cultural, and national identities as well as how these identities both inform and are informed by religion. In this vein, this project analyzes fifty-eight video recorded oral histories from the Arab American National Museum, located in Houston, Texas. I argue that for Americans of Syrian and Lebanese descent who have been in the southern United States for several generations, expressions of their ethnic identity (e.g. Lebanese, Syrian, Arab) are inextricably entangled with expressions of their religious identity as Christian. Therefore, in contrast to previous research which shows trends among Muslims Arab Americans to increasingly identify as “Muslim Americans” (Naber 2012), my research suggests that Christian Arab Americans in the south prioritize their Lebanese, Syrian, and Arab identities – but in a way that covertly smuggles in their faith

“Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects”: Multicultural Counseling Competence with the Arab American Population

The Arab American experience entwines with politics, world affairs, race issues and more recently, in coping with refugee status. The counseling field has been increasing focus on multicultural competence, advocacy, and inclusion of marginalized populations, emphasizing it as a critical component in counselor training and education (Kiselica & Robinson, 2001). Multicultural counseling competence requires demonstrated competence in the areas of multicultural awareness, knowledge and skills when working with diverse populations (Sue et al., 1992). Despite the significant mental health implications identified among the Arab American population, there is limited empirical evidence regarding the multicultural training, education and practice of counselor trainees and professionals when working with this group. As such, the purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate counselor’s multicultural counseling competence with the Arab American population. More specifically, it examined the relationship between professional counselor’s multicultural knowledge, multicultural awareness, specific knowledge about Arab Americans and attitudes held towards Arab Americans. This study also identified variables that predicted attitudes towards Arabs. First, a descriptive analysis of the data identified that counselors and counselor educators demonstrated higher levels of multicultural awareness than multicultural knowledge. Counselors and counselor educators demonstrated low levels of negative attitudes towards Arabs as well as significantly low levels of knowledge about Arab Americans. Second, a correlational analysis identified that there was a significant relationship between general multicultural awareness and negative attitudes towards Arabs, demonstrating that higher levels of multicultural awareness can decrease negative attitudes towards Arabs. Third, a stepwise regression identified multicultural awareness, specific knowledge of Arab Americans and level of training as predictor variables of positive attitudes towards Arabs. Discussion includes findings, implications for education, clinical practice and future research

FROM MANY IDENTITIES TO ONE VOICE?: ARAB AMERICAN ACTIVISM FORGED FROM THE POLITICS OF ISOLATION

This dissertation answers key questions about the reasons behind the mobilization and consolidation of Arab American collective identities expressed in political activism. Summarized into one overarching question, these key questions examine what encourages and challenges the mobilization of a consolidated political voice of Arab Americans in the American political arena. The ultimate goal of this project is to understand the reasons behind the existing political weakness of Arab American voices in the American socio-political arena. More specifically stated, the key questions are: "What, in the history of immigration of Arab American, impacted the current weakness of the collective, Arab American political voice?;" "What impact did political events and policies have on the mobilization of the consolidated Arab American identity?;" "What are the challenges and motivations for consolidation of the Arab American political voice related to the heterogeneity of Arab American communities?;" and finally "What role does counter-mobilization, namely pro-Israeli lobbies, play in affecting the intensity of Arab American voices in American politics?" The general answer, which was acquired through tracing the process of formation of this mobilization and consolidation of the Arab American identity, demonstrates that political isolation is the predominant mobilizing factor for identity-based activism and consolidation of Arab American identities. This study concludes that Arab Americans face political isolation due to several factors such as the relatively short presence of Arab immigrants in the United States, their brief political engagement in the American political arena, the heterogeneity of Arab American communities preventing a development of strong leadership uniting the communities, and the presence of counter-mobilized communities such as well established pro-Israeli lobbies which are often in opposition to Arab American political efforts. Historical events such as the 1967 War or the attacks of September 11 make Arab American activists aware of their political isolation. Thus, unlike many ethnic minorities motivated by cultural and economic factors, Arab American motivation is predominantly politically driven. In regard to methodological approaches, this research draws on interviews, life histories of members of self-labeling Arab American organizations in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area and document analyses to learn about their organizations and motivations behind identity-based political activism. In regard to pre-existing scholarship, this study engages the literature about panethnic mobilization and the incorporation of immigrants into a host society. A recurrent theme in this literature is how panethnic mobilization is driven by economic or cultural factors. However, economic and cultural factors are not key catalysts driving panethnic Arab American identities. At the collective level Arab Americans enjoy all elements of citizenship: legal status, rights and a sense of belonging yet their path to full participation in U.S. political arenas remains a challenge. The consolidated identity-based activism of Arab Americans focuses on gaining a political voice and creating an influential political constituency. As this study reveals, Arab American panethnic organizations strive to disrupt the monolithic and negative discourse about Arabs and Arab Americans in the popular and political culture of the United States by taking ownership over the "Arab American" label. Thus, the use of the monolithic label of Arabness is ultimately a strategic move towards gaining political voice(s). The complexities and nuances of this political isolation and corresponding political mobilization unfold in the chapters below

The cultural politics of the new American studies

In The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies, leading American Studies scholar John Carlos Rowe responds to two urgent questions for intellectuals. First, how did neoliberal ideology use the issues of feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, transnationalism and globalization, class mobility, religious freedom, and freedom of speech and cultural expression to justify a new -American Exceptionalism,- designed to support U.S. economic, political, military, and cultural expansion around the world in the past two decades? Second, if neoliberalism has employed successfully various cultural media, then what are the best means of criticizing its main claims and fundamental purposes? Is it possible under these circumstances to imagine a -counter-culture,- which might effectively challenge neoliberalism or is such an alternative already controlled and contained by such labels as -political correctness,- -the far left,- -radicalism,- -extremism,- even -terrorism,- which in the popular imagination refer to political and social minorities, doomed thereby to marginalization? Rowe argues that the tradition of -cultural criticism- advocated by influential public intellectuals, like Edward Said, can be adapted to the new circumstances demanded by the hegemony of neoliberalism and its successful command of new media. Yet rather than simply honoring such important predecessors as Said, we need to reconceive the role of the public intellectual as more than just an -interdisciplinary scholar- but also as a social critic able to negotiate the different media