Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11 - (Arab American Writing) by Amaney Jamal & Nadine Naber (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Bringing the rich terrain of Arab American histories to bear on conceptualizations of race in the United States, this groundbreaking volume fills a critical gap in the field of U.S. racial and ethnic studies. The articles collected here highlight emergent discourses on the distinct ways that race matters to the study of Arab American histories and experiences and asks essential questions. What is the relationship between U.S. imperialism in Arab homelands and anti-Arab racism in the United States? In what ways have the axes of nation, religion, class, and gender intersected with Arab American racial formations? What is the significance of whiteness studies to Arab American studies? Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply added on the category "Arab-American" to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than as a beginning, in Arab Americans'

Review Quotes

A breakthrough volume. No one has systematically tried to situate Arab American studies within American race theory. . . . very challenging and highly provocative. It will engage readers across the disciplines and will be a must read.-- "Suad Joseph, University of California, Davis"

A volume with a consistent theme--the 'racialization process' of Arab Americans after 9/11--and a rich discursive analysis of 'whiteness, ' 'blackness, ' and 'otherization.'-- "Choice"

As a crucial addition to the field of Arab American studies, Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11 also promises to critically expand the fields of ethnic studies, American studies, and Middle East studies by theorizing the dynamic intersection between race, nation, citizenship, religion, class, gender, and discourses of 'civilization' in relation to Arab and Muslim Americans.-- "Journal of Middle East Women's Studies"

About the Author

Amaney Jamal is assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. She is the author of Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World.

Nadine Naber is assistant professor in the Department of Women's Studies and the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Feminist Studies, the Journal
of Ethnic Studies, and the Journal of Cultural Dynamics. She is coeditor of Gender, Nation, and Belonging, a special issue of MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies.