Friday, April 9, 2021
The Transnational Americas and Druze Communities
Deena Naime, University of Southern California, “Sobhiyat il Druze: Attending to the Queer and Feminist Values of Druze Community and Culture”
Natalie El-Eid, Syracuse University, “Transnational Druze: Reincarnation, Remembering, and Returning”
Moderator: Matthew Jaber Stiffler, University of Michigan
Decolonial Feminisms and Palestine
Mejdulene Shomali, University of Maryland, Baltimore County “The Uses of Beauty in Palestinian Liberation Practices”
Alice Mishkin, University of Michigan, “Silenced Voices: Arab American Women in 1980s Feminist Discourse on Palestine and Israel”
Lucy El-Sherif, University of Toronto, “Nested Negotiations: Dabke, Gender and Authenticity on Turtle Island”
Leena Ali, San Diego State University, “Palestine and the Statelessness of Community Organizing”
Moderator: Dana Olwan, Syracuse University
Transnational cultural studies
W.G. Ellis, San Diego State University, “A Taste of Home: YourLebanon.com and Building a Transnational Lebanon”
Malek Najjar, University of Oregon, “Ya Watani: Arab American Drama and Reflections on our Homelands”
Christine J. Widmayer, University of Wisconsin–Madison, “Flavors of Our Ancestors: Negotiating Chaldean Heritage in an American Family”
Discussant: Michelle Hartman, McGill University
Moderator: Pauline Homsi Vinson, Diablo Valley College
SESSION II
Transnational Yemen — Agency within Empire
Waleed F. Mahdi, University of Oklahoma, “Contemporary Modes of Yemeni American Agency”
Neama Alamri, Princeton University, :Transnational Histories of Labor and Empire in the Yemeni Diaspora”
Discussant: Louise Cainkar, Marquette University
Moderator: Sunaina Maira, University of California, Davis
Literature and storytelling
Rachel Norman, Linfield University, “The Mother’s Milk, The Mother’s Tongue”
Rania Said, UMass Boston, “Women’s Memoirs of the Arab Uprisings”
Joe Kadi, University of Calgary, “Looking for Connections”
Moderator: Carol Fadda, Syracuse University
Migration Stories
Layla A. Goushey, St. Louis Community College, “Arab American Immigrant Stores Culture”
Rebecca Karam, Michigan State University, “Soccer Moms and Social Justice: Concerted Cultivation among Affluent Arab Muslim American Families”
Discussant: Sally Howell, University of Michigan – Dearborn
Moderator: Sarah M. A. Gualtieri, University of Southern California
Navigating US Imperialism and Anti-Muslim racism
Saugher Nojan, UC Santa Cruz, “Cultural Citizenship & Muslim Americans Outside the Racial Box”
Nawal Zahzah, San Diego State University, “Eye to 3eib: Rejecting the Colonial Gaze to find Power in Queer Shame”
Salah D Hassan, Michigan State University, “Empires of a Dystopian Future: Arab-Islamic Presence in ‘American War’”
Maryam Kashani, University of Illinois, “the terror of knowing: errant feminisms and Muslim circumstance”
Moderator: Stanley Thangaraj, The City College of New York
