Global Arab and Arab American Literature Forum (GAAM) Sessions at the MLA!
Below you can find the listing of the first ever sessions organized by the Global Arab and Arab American Literature Forum (GAAM) at the 2016 MLA convention in Austin, TX. Hope to see you there!
- Politics of Solidarities and Cross-Racial Alliances
Friday, 8 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., 18D, ACC
Program arranged by the forums CLCS Global Arab and Arab American and LLC 20th- and 21st-Century American
Presiding: Pauline Homsi Vinson, Diablo Valley Coll.
- “Palestine, Blackness, and the Substrates of Settler Democracy,” Keith Feldman, Univ. of California, Berkeley
- “A Modern Family: The Cross-Racial Relationship Plot in Arab American Fiction,” Therí Alyce Pickens, Bates Coll.
- “Romancing the Swamps: The Reconstitution of a Muslim-Arab Slave,” Ahmed Idrissi Alami, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette
- “Richard Rodriguez’s Concept of the Abrahamic: Cultural Resistance or Religious Form of Colonialism?” Joseph Morales, Univ. of California, Irvine
- Global Arab Texts and Their Publics
Saturday, 9 January, 10:15–11:30 a.m., 306, JW Marriott
Program arranged by the forum CLCS Global Arab and Arab American
Presiding: Hatem Akil, Seminole State Coll.
- “Wrongful Vowels: Accent and Dialect in Hanan al-Shaykh’s Innaha Landan ya Azizi / Only in London,” Dima Ayoub, Georgetown Univ.
- “Poetics of the Glocal in Contemporary Arab Migrant Literature,” Rasha Chatta, School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of London
- “The Politics of Memory in Rafik Schami’s The Dark Side of Love,” Yasemin Mohammad, Univ. of Iowa
- Diasporic Communities, Transnational Publics, and the Global Arab
Sunday, 10 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 205, JW Marriott
Program arranged by the forum CLCS Global Arab and Arab American
Presiding: Carol N. Fadda-Conrey, Syracuse Univ.
- “The Place of the Arab Jew in Postcolonial and Diasporic Arab Studies,” Ella Shohat, New York Univ.
- “The Arabic Novel, Globality, and Diaspora,” Waïl S. Hassan, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana
- “Romancing the War on Terror: Mass-Market Desert Romances and United States Imperialism as Love Story,” Amira Jarmakani, Georgia State Univ.
Responding: Carol N. Fadda-Conrey
Other related Arab American sessions:
- Books That Cook: Food in Fiction and Memoir
Friday, 8 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., 201, JW Marriott
Program arranged by the Community College Humanities Association
Presiding: Stacey Lee Donohue, Central Oregon Community Coll.
- “Dinner Is Severed: Trauma and Food in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory,” Stacey Amo, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge
- “Reading Food (In)Security through Suburban and Rural Homes in Bastard Out of Carolina,” Adriane Bezusko, Univ. of Texas, Austin
- “Canon Plus: A Case for Using Cookbooks in Memoir and Autobiography Courses,” Carrie Tippen, Texas Christian Univ.
- “A Taste of Otherness: Teaching the Cross-Cultural Food Memoir: Diana Abu-Jaber’s The Language of Baklava in literature and composition classrooms,” Pauline Homsi Vinson, Diablo Valley Coll., CA
About GAAM
The newly formed CLCS Global Arab and Arab American forum is interested in works of the Arab diaspora, including the cultural production of Arab American and global Arab writers. The category “Global Arab” allows for a broad conceptualization of diasporic and multilingual work situated within the various national, ethnic, religious, and cultural contexts of the Arab world and the Middle East. The designation “Arab American” is linked to the category “Global Arab” yet deserves special attention as a distinct subfield within American literature that engages with the discourses of race and ethnicity in the United States as well as with the history of Arab and Middle Eastern migrations to the Americas.
