The Arab American Studies Association generally sponsors its own triennial conference and organizes sessions at the American Studies Association and the Middle East Studies Association every other year. The organization has also supported various special sessions and meetings, as outlined below in chronological order.
AASA 2021 Virtual Symposium
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
Discussant: Louise Cainkar, Marquette University
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
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
AASA Triennial Conference, 2020
Due to the impacts of COVID-19 on our communities, we cancelled the conference originally scheduled for April 3-5, 2020.
AASA at ASA 2017
Beginning in 2017, AASA planned to hold its annual meeting at the American Studies Association in alternating years.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
- 2:00 – 3:45: New Directions in Arab American Studies: How We Read Now
- Hyatt Regency Chicago, Dusable, Third Floor West Tower
- 4:00 – 5:45: Queer and Feminist Dissents: Locating Pedagogies of Refusal in Iranian and Arab Cultural Production
- Hyatt Regency Chicago, Haymarket, Concourse Level West Tower
Friday, November 10, 2017
- 12:00 – 1:30: Arab American Studies Association Board Meeting
- Hyatt Regency Chicago, Stetson BC, Exhibit Level West Tower
- 1:30 – 2:30: Arab American Studies Association Members’ Meeting
- Hyatt Regency Chicago, Stetson BC, Exhibit Level West Tower
- 5:00 – 6:30: Connect Chicago: Resistance Movements meet Insurgent Scholarship
- A conversation and celebration of movement-based scholarship, activism, and performance
- Location: Arab American Cultural Center, UIC, 701 south Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607, 111 Stevenson Hall,
- Organized by the Arab American Studies Association, the ASA Critical Prison Studies Caucus, the ASA Activist Caucus, the Arab American Cultural Center at UIC, and the Social Justice Initiative at UIC.
Saturday, November 11, 2017
8:00 – 9:45: Dissent Horizons: The Consequences of Ambivalence for Arab and Muslim Americans
Hyatt Regency Chicago, Skyway 260, Skyway Level East Tower
10:00 – 11:45: Arab American Studies Association: Dissenting Pedagogies: Teaching in an Age of Islamophobia
Hyatt Regency Chicago, Skyway 260, Skyway Level East Tower
12:00 – 1:45: Arab American Studies Association: Grounded but Unsettled Solidarities: Exploring Strategically Mobile Resistances to US Militarism and Empire
Hyatt Regency Chicago, Skyway 260, Skyway Level East Tower
2:00 – 3:45: Arab American Studies Association: Sanctuary and its Radical Futures: Sanctuary Movements in the Framework of Joint Struggle
Hyatt Regency Chicago, Skyway 260, Skyway Level East Tower
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)
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
The AASA Inaugural Conference
Beyond the Label: Arab American Faces, Places, and Traces
A conference organized by the Arab American Studies Association and the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI., in honor of Alixa Naff (1919-2013).
3-7:30 p.m. Fri., April 4, 2014
8 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Sat., April 5, 2014
8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Sun., April 6, 2014
About the Conference
The label “Arab American” is imbued with layered meanings within both academic settings and public arenas. Variously embraced, sometimes contested, often redefined, Arab American identity constructions have been influenced by historical factors, discourses of self-identification, and normative processes of data collection. Foremost in promoting understanding of the changing nature of the Arab American label have been influential works by archivists and historians such as Alixa Naff, whose contributions to archiving Arab American history include a collection of oral histories and artifacts that she catalogued and donated to the Archives Center, National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Her preeminent publication, Becoming American: The Early Arab-American Experience, remains a pioneering and influential history of Arab Americans.
Panel themes include
Arab American Feminist Studies; Early Visions of Arabs in America; Arabs on Screen and Stage; Arabs as Ethnic Minorities in the United States; Arab American Writers; Religion, Race, and Class; and Transnationalism in Arab American Identity
Keynote Address Suad Joseph, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Davis
MESA 2016
▪ Board Meeting, Thursday, 11/17, 3-4pm, MIT (3)
▪ Members Meeting, Thursday, 11/17, 6:30-7:30pm, Salon C (4)
▪ Open Reception Honoring Elaine Hagopian, Thursday, 11/17, 7:30-8:30pm, Salon C (4)
Thematic Conversation: Global Arab America: Cosmopolitanism and its Discontents (Friday, 11/18/16 3:45pm)
Organized by Suad Joseph and Pauline Homsi Vinson
Chair: Pauline Homsi Vinson
Participants: Sarah Gualtieri, Carol Fadda, Bassam Haddad, and Lisa Hajjar
SUMMARY
This thematic conversation aims to look at current trajectories in Arab American studies through the lens of cosmopolitanism. It asks: How do Arab American engagements with questions of belonging, diaspora, and transnational affiliation intersect with concerns about world citizenship, moral obligations, and globalization? What are the tensions as well as productive overlaps between such terms as “Arab” and “American”; “America” and “the Americas”; “Arab” and “Global Arab”; “Middle Eastern American” and “Arab American”? How does the figure of the refugee at once expand and add stresses to notions of mobility, exile, transnationalism, the nation, and the very concept of cosmopolitanism?
Professional Development Workshop: Proposal Writing and Research Design: How To Fund Your Ideas (Saturday, 11/19/16 12:00nn)
SUMMARY:
Those embarking on academic careers must master the art of writing proposals for research funding. Whether you are conducting research for a dissertation or book or seeking support for a special project-locating and securing funding is critical. This workshop will provide expert guidelines on how to write compelling proposals from the initial phrasing of the research question, step by step, to the research outcomes, significance, dissemination, and public outreach. It will also address such issues as identifying and working with funding agencies, effectively communicating research methodology and goals, preparing budgets, and planning for the dissemination of results.
Presiding: The workshop will be led by Suad Joseph, Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies, University of California at Davis.
50 YEARS AGO: THE 1967 WAR’S IMPACT ON ARAB AMERICANS AND ARABS IN AMERICA (Sunday, 11/20/16 8:00am)
SUMMARY
This panel will explore how the 1967 June War impacted the lives and identities of Arab-Americans, Arabs and non-Arab identified organizations in the U.S. from the late 1960s into the 1970s. We will bring together scholars of modern history and cultural studies from a variety of institutions to discuss the impact the war in the Middle East had on Americans, recent Arab immigrants and Arab Americans, some of whom had been living in the U.S. for generations. This panel sets out to create a conversation on the evolution of perceptions of Arabs in the U.S. and on the ripple effects of the war on people as well as emerging and existent institutions.
Chair: Evelyn Alsultany
Presenters:
▪ Remembering the 1967 War: transnational politics, memory and identity by Randa Kayyali
▪ Transnational Alliances: The AAUG’s Advocacy for Palestine and the Third World by Suraya Khan
▪ From 1967 to Operation Boulder: The Erosion of Arab Americans’ Civil Liberties in the 1970s by Pamela Pennock
▪ A Widening Circle: Arab American and Non-Arab-Identified Activist Groups, 1967-1980 by Salim Yaqoub
Previous AASA Panels/Roundtables at MESA:
- MESA 2015: November 21-24, 2015, Denver, CO:
- Ethnic Minority or White? Social and Economic Lives of Arab Americans, November 22, 2015, 11:00 AM.
- Arabs in the U.S. Census, November 22, 2015, 4:30 PM
- MESA 2014: November 22-25, 2014, Washington, DC:
- Insiders/Outsiders: Arab American Transnational Engagements, Tensions, and Identities. November 23, 2014, 8:30 AM.
- Contested Voices: Gender, Narrative, and Subversion in Arab American Women’s Writing. November 24, 2014, 8:30 AM.
- MESA 2013: October 10-13, 2013, New Orleans, LA: AASA held its Business Meeting on October 10, 2013.
- MESA 2012: November 12-20, 2012, Denver, CO:
- Arab American Studies at the Crossroads (panel).
- Sources and Resources for Middle Eastern American Studies (panel).
- The Current State of Arab American Studies from Graduate Student Perspectives (roundtable).
Contemporary Research in Arab American Studies:
New Trends and Critical Perspectives
A Conference Honoring Michael Suleiman
Arab American National Museum
Dearborn, MI
November 4-6, 2011
This gathering of scholars, writers, and community members honors Dr. Michael Suleiman, a pioneer in the field of Arab American Studies, who passed away in 2010. The conference will feature scholarly presentations, readings, and performances highlighting the diverse approaches to contemporary research in Arab American Studies.
