scholarly journals Combating 9/11 Negative Images of Arabs in American Culture: A Study of Yussef El Guindi’s Drama

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Mahmoud F Alshetawi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Arab Americans ◽  
Arab American ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Negative Images ◽  
Clash Of Cultures

This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavours of Arab American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance, and theatre in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab American dramatists and theatre groups attempt to counter the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which have madly become characteristic of contemporary American literature and media following 9/11. In this context, this study examines Yussef El Guindi, an Egyptian-American, and his work. El Guindi has devoted most of his plays to fight the stereotypes that are persistently attributed to Arabs and Muslims, and his drama presents issues relating to identity formation and what this formation means to be Arab American. A scrutiny of these plays shows that El Guindi has dealt with an assortment of topics and issues all relating to the stereotypes of Arab Americans and the Middle East. These issues include racial profiling and surveillance, stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the cinema and theatre, and acculturation and clash of cultures.

Countering Post-9/11 Stereotypes: Arab American Playwrights Make Their Voices Heard

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-532
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Arab Americans ◽  
Arab American ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
American Drama ◽  
American Theater ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Clash Of Cultures

Before 9/11Arab-American drama was sporadic and inconsistent in the sense that there was a relative absence of Arab-American theater or playwrights who made their voices heard across the USA. However, after 9/11 the American theater scene witnessed a surge of Arab-American drama and theater that aimed at addressing the American audience in order to voice the concerns, fears and anxieties of Arab Americans. They wanted to dispel much of the stereotype attributes which have been wrongly associated with them because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This study intends to examine the dramatic endeavors of Arab-American playwrights to make their voices heard through drama, performance and theater in light of transnationalism and diaspora theory. The study argues that Arab-American dramatists and theater groups write back to the hegemonic polemics against Arabs and Muslims, which has madly become characteristic of contemporary American literature and media following 9/11. Viewed in light of the anti-Arab American literary discourse, Arab-American playwrights and performers have taken giant steps towards changing the stereotypes of Arabs, and countering the loud voices of those who try to add fuel to the blazing flames of Islamophobia. To assess the contribution of Arab-American dramatists and performers to make their voices heard loud and clear in countering the stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, Yussef El Guindi (1960-) is going to be discussed in this paper because he has been fighting the stereotypes of Arab Americans and Islamophobia in his drama and theater. El Guindi has devoted most of his plays to fight the stereotypes that are persistently attributed to Arabs and Muslims, and his drama presents issues relating to identity formation and what it means to be Arab American. A scrutiny of his plays shows that El Guindi has dealt with an assortment of topics and issues all relating to the stereotypes of Arab Americans and the Middle East. These issues include racial profiling and surveillance; stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in the cinema and theater; and acculturation and clash of cultures. Keywords: Arab American, Identity, Theater, Stereotypes, Diaspora, Acculturation

scholarly journals Arab Americans: Between Conflicting Definitions of Belonging

1970 ◽  
pp. 67-70
Author(s):  
Jehan Mullin
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Arab Americans ◽  
Arab American ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Arab Region ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Past ◽  
Arab Middle East

As a proud-to-be Arab American woman who has resided in Lebanon for the past few years, my interest was immediately peaked when I heard that an issue of Al-Raida was to be dedicated to “Arab diaspora women”. I could not help but wonder who exactly would be represented in the issue because, as I have learned, what the category "Arab Women" refers to and how exactly they are defined for many among Arab diasporic communities often differs with the more commonly accepted definitions in the Arab region. Of course, nothing is clear-cut when it comes to identity. Individuals of diverse ethnic, religious or cultural backgrounds often identify in numerous ways. There are, however, general patterns that can be discerned in how communities are defined or categorized amongst Arab American populations and those in the Arab Middle East; and it is the differences in these definitions that conflict with one another in rather fundamental ways.

scholarly journals Exploring Aging Masculinities From Different Disciplines and Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 825-825
Author(s):  
Liat Ayalon ◽  
Josep Armengol ◽  
Michael Kimmel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Successful Aging ◽  
Older Men ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Aging Men ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Types Of Information

Abstract Traditionally, gerontology research has been relatively genderless. When the intersection of age and gender was explored, this was done primarily by focusing on the experiences of older women. Much less is known about the experiences of older men. The present symposium brings together work from the humanities and the social sciences in order to explore societal images and personal experiences of aging men. The paper by Maierhofer and Ratzenböck provides a theoretical outlook on this intersection from the humanities perspective, followed by empirical applications from the social sciences. Next, Armengol uses contemporary American literature to challenge the traditional stereotype of decline in sexuality and masculinity. The paper by Ni Leime & O’Neill examines stereotypes of aging masculinities, but this time from the perspective of older men as the audience who react to their portrayal in visual culture. Finally, Ayalon and Gweyrtz-Meydan present ethical dilemmas faced by physicians who treat older men’s sexuality in light of active marketing campaigns of the pharmaceutical industry, which advocate for a model of successful aging and ongoing sexual intercourse. The discussant, Kimmel, will conceptualize the four papers by stressing the different types of information that can be obtained via different methods of inquiry. The complementary information provided by the different papers and the integration of methods and findings from the humanities with the social sciences will be discussed.

The Government of War

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-793
Author(s):  
Dina Rizk Khoury
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
State System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Services ◽  
Short Piece ◽  
The Government

I write this piece as Iraq, following Syria, descends into a civil war that is undermining the post–World War I state system and reconfiguring regional and transnational networks of mobilization and instrumentalizations of violence and identity formation. That the Middle East has come to this moment is not an inevitable product of the artificiality of national borders and the precariousness of the state system. It is important to avoid this linear narrative of inevitability, with its attendant formulations of the Middle East as a repository of a large number of absences, and instead to locate the current wars in a specific historical time: the late and post–Cold War eras, marked by the agendas of the Washington Consensus and the globalization of neoliberal discourses; the privatization of the developmental and welfare state; the institutional devolution and multiplication of security services; and the entrenchment of new forms of colonial violence and rule in Israel and Palestine and on a global scale. The conveners of this roundtable have asked us to reflect on the technopolitics of war in the context of this particular moment and in light of the pervasiveness of new governmentalities of war. What I will do in this short piece is reflect on the heuristic and methodological possibilities of the study of war as a form of governance, or what I call the “government of war,” in light of my own research and writing on Iraq.

Biology and Manners

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Us ◽  
Main Series ◽  
Current Concerns ◽  
The Red Queen

This volume is a new collection of scholarly essays on the US science fiction and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold. The collection argues for the significant contributions Bujold’s works make to feminist and queer thought, disability studies, and fan studies. In addition, it suggests the importance of Bujold to contemporary American literature. The volume continues the establishment of Bujold as an important author of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. It argues that her corpus spans the distance between two full arcs of US feminism and has anticipated or responded to several of its current concerns in ways that invite or even require theoretical exploration. As well as papers on earlier work in the main series (the Vorkosigan Saga and the ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ novels The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls), the collection also presents work on recent publications such as The Sharing Knife sequence; the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ novellas; and the recent Vorkosigan Saga novel Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. The collection deepens feminist research in Bujold studies by incorporating queer and disability studies perspectives; and includes historiographic retracing of scholarship on Bujold’s work.

scholarly journals The Forms and Meanings of (In)Visibility Arab-Americans and the State of Terror in Youssef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat and Language Rooms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Schiavini
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Arab Americans ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Arab American ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
The Relationship

This article investigates two well-known plays by Youssef El Guindi, the most important and prolific playwright of 21st century Arab-American theatre. Both plays are related to the consequences of the terrorist attacks on the Arab-American community, and they explore the structures of control enacted by the security state and the strategies of its repressive politics. The article focuses in particular on the tropes of visibility and invisibility and its paradoxes for a minority that moved from ‘invisible citizens’ to ‘visible subjects’ within a few hours. The paradoxes of visibility and invisibility and their divide are here explored in relation to three main issues: the relationship between ethnic identity and citizenship – be it social and/or political; deviancy and the construction of Otherness; and identity and the body.

scholarly journals GRAPHIC MEANS IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EXPRESSIVE COMPRESSED TEXTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (16) ◽  
pp. 166-172
Author(s):  
Natalya Lysenko
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
English Language ◽  
Information Load ◽  
Information Presentation ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Special System ◽  
Additional Information

This article deals with the consideration of functioning of graphic means on the basis of the English-language expressive compressed texts. The types of abbreviations as well as other graphic peculiarities of the information presentation in the text have been investigated, using examples of English advertising texts, anecdotes, aphorisms, and contemporary American literature. English-language compressed texts have both leading and subordinate features. Their leading feature is increased informational saturation, while the subordinate signs usually include abbreviations, lack of auxiliary and emotionally coloured words. Among the main graphic means used in the English-language compressed texts, various cuts of words in the form of abbreviations, traditional or specific reductions should be noted. One can also mention a special system of the location of the material, which allows to highlight the main information and omit the secondary, significantly reducing the volume. The use of footnotes also helps to save a certain amount of text array. Punctuation marks in compressed text not only make it possible to reduce a certain part of the information, but may also carry additional information load. In general, the use of the mentioned graphic means in English-language compressed texts have been analyzed, the peculiarities of their functioning have been revealed in the article. As the perspectives of the research, it was offered to identify and investigate the existing graphic means in other types of the English-language compressed texts.

scholarly journals Writing Arab-American Identity Post 9/11

1970 ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
Carol Fadda-Conrey
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Arab American ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
The Us ◽  
Arab American Literature

In their introduction to the first anthology of Arab-American short fiction, Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction, editors Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa (2004) comment on the inextricable link between the global political repercussions triggered by the events of 9/11 and the need to assert Arab-American literature on the US literary map.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Robert Lee
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Karen Tei Yamashita

The Introduction offers a succinct profile of Karen Tei Yamashita as author. Her biography, main publications, and general standing in contemporary American literature are all indicated. There follows annotation of the essays at hand, her autobiographical essay “Reimagining Traveling Bodies” and an interview as to how Yamashita envisages her main themes and craft.

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