2nd Triennial Conference on Arab American Studies
Waypoints and Watersheds: Arab American Activism and Memories, A Conference Marking the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 War
Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI
24-26 March 2017
FRIDAY MARCH 24 @ UM-Dearborn campus Social Sciences Building, room 1500 SSB
50 Years Ago: The 1967 War’s Impact on Arab Americans and Arabs in America
Chair: Sally Howell, University of Michigan – Dearborn
Suraya Khan, Rice University, “Transnational Alliances: The AAUG’s Advocacy for Palestine and the Third
World”
Pam Pennock, University of Michigan-Dearborn, “From 1967 to Operation Boulder: The Erosion of Arab Americans’ Civil
Liberties in the 1970s”
Salim Yaqub, University of California-Santa Barbara, “A Widening Circle: Arab American and non-Arab Identified Activist Groups,1967-80”
Randa Kayyali, George Washington University, “Restrained nostalgia, blame, regret and omissions: Remembering the AAUG”
6:45-7:15 Reception
Roundtable of Activists from the 1960s and 1970s
Chair: Louise Cainkar, Marquette University
Activists (in alphabetical order): Nabeel Abraham, Barbara Aswad, Abdeen Jabara, George Khoury, Hassan Nawash, Camele Odeh, Ghada Talhami, and Jim Zogby
SATURDAY MARCH 25
Studying the Past: Archives, Media, and Activisms
Chair: Janice Terry, Marietta College, OH
Charlotte Karem Albrecht, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, “Studying the Arab American Past in the Wake of 1967”
Salah Hassan, Michigan State University, “At Odds with Itself: Arab American Activism and Palestine Solidarity”
Michelle Baroody, University of Minnesota, “Producing (Dis)continuity in Arab American Immigration: rethinking the role of Alixa Naff’s Archive”
Umayyah Cable, Northwestern University, “From AAUG to ‘Arabic Hour’: Arab American Scholar-Activism and Independent Media in the 1980s and 1990s”
Facing Discrimination and Acceptance in the U.S. South
Chair: Evelyn Alsultany, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Layla Azmi Goushey, St. Louis Community College, “The Mukhtar of Dallas: Dr. Munir Bayoud’s Impact on Politics and Culture in the North Texas Arab-American Community after 1967”
Mejdulene Shomali, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, “The Pulse of Queer Life: Arab Bodies in Gay Bars”
Amanda Eads, North Carolina State University, “Lebanese Resonations: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Being and Sounding Lebanese in the U.S.”
12:45-1:30 LUNCH @ AANM
Solidarities, Discords and Intergroup Relations
Chair: Germine Awad, University of Texas-Austin
Ramsey Dahab, University of Miami & Marisa Omori, University of Miami, “Anti-Muslim Discrimination as New Racism: Religious Convergence and Nativist Boundaries in America”
Nina Shoman-Dajani, Moraine Valley Community College, “Racial Identity Construction of Arab American College Students”
Kristine Ajrouch, Eastern Michigan University & Toni Antonucci, University of
Michigan-Ann Arbor, “Intergroup Relations and Integration: The Case of Dearborn, MI”
Muniba Saleem, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, “Reliance on Media or Contact and Support for Policies Harming Muslims”
3:15-3:30 BREAK
Politics, Place, and Race: Negotiating in and out of Arab American Identity
Chair: Matthew Jaber Stiffler, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Rachel Norman, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, “Splintered Selves, Lost Language and a Fractured Text in Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home”
Ida Yalzadeh, Brown University, “‘We’re white – so stop shooting!’: Iranian-Arab Accent Play in Maz Jobrani’s Standup Comedy”
Waleed Mahdi, University of Oklahoma, “American Dream Contestations: The Cultural Politics of Arab American
Citizenship in Film”
5:00-6:30 AASA Business Meeting
Discussion of future directions, mission and membership
Presider: Louise Cainkar, AASA President
Author’s Forum for books published on Arab Americans in 2015, 2016 & 2017
Chair: Randa Kayyali
Carol Fadda, Series Editor, Critical Arab American Studies Series, Syracuse University Press
Keith Feldman, A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2015)
Amira Jarmakani, An Imperialist Love Story: Desert Romances and the War on Terror (New York University Press, 2015)
Germine Awad and Mona Amer, eds., Handbook of Arab American Psychology (Routledge, 2016)
Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs and US-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Cornell University Press, 2016)
Pamela Pennock, The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight Against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
Anan Ameri, The Scent of Jasmine: Coming of Age in Jerusalem and Damascus (Interlink Publishing, 2017)
Eric Love, Islamophobia and Racism in America (New York University Press, 2017)
Awards presented to Nabeel Abraham and Barbara Aswad for their scholarship on Arab Americans
8pm Dinner, Dancing and Music @AANM ANNEX with DJ Salar Ansari
SUNDAY MARCH 26 @ AANM ANNEX
8:30-9 Breakfast served
Arab American Intersections: Contesting Racialized Imaginations of Arab Womanhood
Chair: Kristine Ajrouch, Eastern Michigan University
Zeinab McHeimech, University of Western Ontario, “From Letters to Spoken Words: The Illegibility of Blackness within Constructions of Arabness”
Martina Koegeler-Abdi, University of Copenhagen, “From Beirut with Love: Rosemary Hakim’s Self-Representation as ‘Miss Lebanon American 1955’ in her memoir Arabian Antipodes“
Kelli Zaytoun, Wright State University, “Post-Oppositional Identity Politics: Lessons from Contemporary Arab American Women Writers”
Deniz Durmus, John Carroll University, “Feminist Orientalism and Arab/Muslim Women”
10:45-11 BREAK
Imperial Logics, the Carceral State, and Captive Arab Bodies
Chair: Louise Cainkar, Marquette University
Carol Fadda, Syracuse University, “Arab American Citizenship, the Logics of Empire and the U.S. Carceral State”
Keith P. Feldman, University of California-Berkeley, “You (shall) have the body: Ghostly Substitutions and the Visual Archive of Indefinite Detention”
Therese Saliba, Evergreen State College, “Feminist Convergences & Watershed Moments: 1967-1982”
Amira Jarmakani, San Diego State University, “Shiny Happy Imperialism: An Affective Exploration of ‘Ways of Life’ in the War on Terror”
12:45-1:30 LUNCH
